Du Glana 2000 - quick TN updated with 03

Just thought I’d mention this in passing.

Some may not know of this wine - Du Glana is a Cru Bourgeois in St.Julien. When I started getting into wine, I dismissed it as being rather rustic and clumsy, but it has come on well in the last 20 years or so.

Anyway, the 00 is excellent - vibrant red cherry and blackcurrant with plenty of St Julien spice and character. Good follow-through of blackberry with hints of yeast and leather, then a fine, elegant finish. CC standard for a fraction of the price. Just a measly 10 euros on release. 91 pts.

The 03 is also very good and I noticed that Du Glana has suddenly started getting good reviews in recent years, so the 2015 looks very good value indeed. Compared to the St.Julien competition, I would put this on a par with Moulin Riche or Clos du Marquis, it’s better than Lalande-Borie and I’m not sure I don’t prefer it to Langoa.

Cheers all!

Wow that is some endorsement Julian, thanks for the tip. A wine that is so often seen but never tried.

If it is as good as Clos Du Marquis, which is of course no longer a ‘second wine’ (if you believe the marketing BS), that is some accolade.

Cheers Ian! Well I’m no pro and have no pretention at all in any respect - this is just my taste.
I like Clos du Marquis, but I really cannot taste the CC qualities others profess to find. It’s a good wine but apart from the 1990, I’ve never been over-impressed. The price now is simply ludicrous - so Clos du Marquis is 50% better than Lagrange???!!!

When I bought the Du Glana 2000, nobody had reviewed it and I did so because it was cheap. I thought it would at least provide good weekday enjoyment. Working my way through the case, I was increasingly impressed. At first, I used it as the first wine in St.Julien themed evenings with friends, to introduce them to the general flavours. The second wine would normally be a Moulin Riche, a Gloria or a CDM, before moving on to to a CC. To my surprise, the Du Glana started performing better than the other three quite early on and has always done so since.

Curious, I tried comparing the 03 with Gloria, then with CDM and Lalande-Borie. The Du Glana was again better than all three - fresher, better defined fruit and more elegant, the others tasting stodgy in comparison (which I think they are anyway).

It hasn’t just “started” to be good in recent vintages, unlike what the better reviews would have us believe - they just missed out on it. Sadly, the price will inevitably start to rise accordingly, but it’s well worth trying before that happens. The 2015 can be found for around 15 euros in France, which is half the price of Moulin Riche or Gloria, and probably under three times cheaper than Clos du Marquis.

Anyway, to go back to the 00 - if somebody served me a glass, saying it was something like Beychevelle or Branaire, something along those lines, I would quite readily have believed them.

Happy New Year to all of you! I trust your festivities were successful, with loads of great wines. I had the usual mixture of delights and disasters - the unpredictability is why wine is fun. I’ve posted about most of the good ones already, but not this one. I decided to just update my post about Du Glana 2000 rather than start a new one.

Du Glana - Cru Bourgeois Saint Julien 2003

Like most 2003s tasted this year, this one started badly, with pinched aromas and pinched, burnt flavours. It needed a couple of hours in a decanter to come out of its shell. The nose was then much more expressive, with brambly fruit aromas mixed with spices and herbs, leading into a rich attack of red cherry and redcurrant, then a very deep middle section leaning more towards blackberry, and a long, satisfying finish. Difficult to choose between this and the 2000. 91 pts

We tasted this alongside a Clos du Marquis 2003 that a friend brought along. No geeky blind tasting, just glasses of each wine served with dinner. At first, the Clos du Marquis dominated, but as the evening went on, so the Du Glana pulled away, with much better depth and fruit. The CDM tasted similar, but with less of everything. The only superior aspect of the CDM was the silky finish, which showed up a very slight coarseness in the Du Glana’s aftertaste.

I wasn’t particularly surprised that the Du Glana fared so well, simply because we had had the 00 in May, but needless to say our friends were.

It’s always fun to taste a wine alongside another and it puts things into perspective - it’s very easy to get carried away with a bargain find like this one, but it really is good. There are literally dozens of CCs which produced worse wines in 2003 and even in St.Julien, I would say it is better than Branaire or Lagrange, for example. In fact I enjoyed it more than the Léoville Barton we had recently. Sadly, it was our last bottle and I’m unlikely to find any more, since the last time it was seen at auction here was in 2014!
Of course the big difference between Du Glana and the others is its price - at 8 euros, the 03 was even cheaper than the 00!

Anyway, like the 2000, this is one to look out for at auction, since it is probably only worth around 20 euros.

Wow interesting notes. Rarely see this here, although the 2011 has inexplicably showed up at our Costco.

Cheers Arv - well, it’s worth a try, anyway. I like the more trendy wines I mentioned earlier in the thread, but the power of hype will always favour them compared to this wine. I finished the 03 with a glass of De Malleret 2010 alongside it last night - which I’m a great fan of - again, there was no comparison.

I found another bottle of 2000 at an auction last year (22 euros!):

Aromas of plums, cassis, licorice and old, well-polished leather, leading into a mouthful of red cherry and blackcurrant, followed by a searing, silky middle section of blackberry and cranberry, full of St. Julien spice, with a very sweet, persistent finish. Excellent.

Not a surprise anymore, but a very impressive wine. Even better than the last one, it has become more silky, more refined.

This was a timely reminder of how good this wine can be, because it’s one of those which have left the Cru Bourgeois classification. Having had the Branaire, Clos du Marquis and Gloria 2000s in the last six months, I can confirm that the Du Glana is better than any of them, for a lot less.

Will keep a look out for it Julian.

I unearthed a 1985 in my collection, I guess I had better drink it.

Just had a 2012. Very much a classic style Bdx and a good value.

Deleted.

Peter, that’s one I don’t have so I’ll look out for it!

Steen- yep, I know, but even when they do write nice things about it, nobody cares so we’re safe!

What kind of name is Du Glana? Are the owners from another country?

Du Glana is owned by the Meffre family, as far as I know. I don’t know where the name Glana comes from, since the original owner was a Monsieur Cayx, but I’m guessing it came from the gascon word “glanar”, which means acorn, I think.

The Meffre family also owns Château Lalande, Saint-Julien and Château Bellegrave, Pauillac.
I had the pleasure of drinking several vintages of all three Meffre wines, the excellent 2000 du Glana included. I can’t remember a disappointing bottle, quite the contrary. These three wines represent the best QPR in Médoc I’ve ever seen.