Beschreibung:

Château Branaire-Ducru Starting to love wine in the early 70s was a treat. It was a time when the New World and other European wines were not so much part of the wine landscape as they are today so you could concentrate on the French classics – and their classical taste profiles. Today most Bordeaux wines are more powerful and have alcohols of at least 13 or 14° ; in those days, 12° was a good achievement. So we were brought up on wines that were often quite slim and had to learn to appreciate all the finer qualities of a wine's make-up. One wine that I found in that sense particularly satisfying was Branaire Ducru and I drank it regularly from special offers (that fitted my budget), especially the '66 and '71 which became my Médoc reference points. They had such purety and finesse. It is interesting that today, after three decades of progressively bigger wines, there is a definite trend in Bordeaux back to this kind of finesse. But Branaire didn't need to go back : they had the finesse already ! I like to imagine the originators of Branaire, after it was spun off from the massive Beychevelle estate in the early 1800s, Jean-Baptiste Branaire and later the distant cousin Gustave Ducru who added his name in 1875, discussing the assemblage in December and selecting only the vats of the most delicate finest wines because that was their vision of what wine should be. From 1919, the Tapie family continued that tradition and must have passed it on to Patrick Maroteaux and recently, after he sadly passed away in 2017, to his son François-Xavier, for the wines still have that lovely reserved understated expression of Cabernet (65% Cabernet Sauvignon in the vineyard), tempered by astute well-managed « élevage » in 60% new oak. The very advanced new cellar (for 1991 when it was built) of varying sizes of stainless vats shines like silver but is used to control and restrain rather than to build up the wines. This is a series of consecutive vintages that span the period of the estate's growing renown : '98 and '99, both medium-bodied, pure and elegant in their expression of Cabernet. '00 surprisingly reserved for such a burly-styled vintage, favouring Cabernet fruit intensity and delicate oak aromas over weight and power. '01 reminding me of that '71 that I knew so well but with more modern completeness '02 a touch more austere in its youth '03, the last of estate manager Philippe Dhalluin's vintages before he moved on to work wonders at Mouton, unusually bold-styled, because that was the nature of the vintage, yet still very fine today. '04, Jean-Dominique Videau's first vintage, deliberately and successfully soft in structure in a year when tannin management was so difficult. '05 much richer in fruit and obtaining more Parker scores, the Branaire character coming from the drier tannins. It gives the impression of evolving very slowly for a long time more. Château Branaire-Ducru 1998 Saint-Julien, 4ème cru classé In original wooden cases 24 bottles per lot