2007 Château de Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape Rhône
A massive, portwine-like fruit wrap your palate in velvet. Ripe black&blue fruits with marcipan, cinnamon and ripe&silky tannins. Was a perfect match with braised lamb-chops, but too heavy solo. No doubt, this Monster-Cd9P is a real temptation. But I miss nuance, individuality, complexity and the wild, savage elements I love from Pegau. I found him too foreward, one-dimensional. YES, that´s critics on high level and it is a baby. Bottom line, I wouldn´t buy it for my cellar. Interestingly the Cd9P-expert Gerhard Praesent said similar things a few weeks ago:
“Beaucastel has changed since the late 90ties and lost some of its character - it´s too fruity in style, too foreward and a bit one-dimensional … That´s critics on a high level”
Each to his own, my friend Niko loves this wine (97pts.) and would like to buy this wine by the case…
Seriously, I tried a sampling of this wine, and I did like it, and knowing the pedigree of Beaucastel, I assume it will only get better. Nevertheless, I had it side by side with Viuex Telegraphe and much preferred the Vieux Telegraphe.
Martin, thanks for the informative TN. It doesn’t sound like my kind of wine, at least not now. But as you say, maybe in 20 years, it will be something special. Not something I’ll risk, though.
I have not had the 07 yet but the 90 was never port-like and I had it many, many times when it was young. I’d say it was more elegant than the hedonistic 89. I think the 01 will evolve like the 90 and will be saddened if the 07 has taken to the dark (fruit) side.
Well, the 07 isn’t Port-like either, though it does have a fairly dark profile - what you would expect from a wine that is about 1/3 Mourvedre. I don’t think it’s significantly different in this respect from any other vintage.
I’ll have to taste it to confirm Martin’s tasting note about it being port like…I surely hope not!! This is the second note, so, I will be careful buying this vintage. I normally buy several cases in great vintages
2007 Château de Beaucastel Châteauneuf-du-Pape- France, Rhône, Southern Rhône, Châteauneuf-du-Pape (3/28/2010)
Nose is full of dense cocoa and cherry. At this stage in its life, this is a weighty, dense, powerful Beaucastel. Very pure fruit, with a dense mid-palate. I really enjoy the spices and herbs that come through on this wine - cinnamon and clove are most obvious. This wine isn’t closed at all right now. The “classic” Beaucastel funk, damp earth, and forest floor are nowhere to be seen at this point - so if that’s the profile you’re looking for, I’d wait on this for a WHILE. (93 pts.)
Also tasted it again yesterday. It’s a beautiful, slightly more modern Beaucastel. Nothing port-like about it for me, though plenty of lush, dark, spicy, earthy fruit.
I see lots of notes on this one on CT, very positive, and I’m wondering if anyone here had tasted this one recently. I am ‘weighting’ the options to open, to wait, or open and then decide. (But I have only two of them, so that’s a careful weighting process…)
If just two bottles, give this at least a decade (2017) before pulling the cork. I am a fan of this wine, but its best days are clearly down the road. My .02.
And presumably without the Brett [unless ‘spicy and earthy’ are an indication] that was often associated with Beaucastel particularly in both the 89 and 90 vintages referred to above and generally prior to the major assault on its source.
One of the significant changes in modern vintages of the Beaucastel CDP is that they dealt with the old wood in the winery that saw many bottles with the potential to become very Bretty and 89 and 90 are classic cases of that.
In 1998 American wine lover Charles Collins famously had samples from these two Beaucastel vintages laboratory tested and found [at least in his samples] that the 89 had 897 micrograms/litre [parts per billion] and the 90 some 3330 of 4-ethylphenol, a major product within the many products of the Brettanomyces yeast. While detection and recognition thresholds vary widely for individuals [as with all wine chemistry e.g. haloanisoles including TCA] 425 micrograms/litre has been considered a good general level above which wine will be noticeably Bretty.
I am sure none of this [the story or the chemistry] is news to you Alan but it may be interesting to others in the context of this thread how, for some fans, Beaucastel has become less ‘interesting’ and even ‘disappointing’ and such comments seem to have coincided with the major curtailment of Brett in the wine. Of course there may be other reasons but this has apparently been one of the major ones.
Nigel, I had heard some of this as well, and pretty obviously Beaucastel vintages since about 99 or 2000 are much cleaner than earlier vintages. In some ways that might indeed make the wines less “interesting” (though, for me, much less risky). I actually think it’s other factors that are contributing more: the wines seem riper to me than they used to, particularly in the “big” vintages. I don’t know if they’ve been influenced by Parker, if it’s a weather factor, or growing/picking decisions, but the wine just doesn’t have the interest for me that it used (not discounting changing tastes on my part as well).
This discussion does not work well for me… instead of making me delay opening a bottle to 2017, the opinions here make me want to open one and test it myself…
For me, the wines seemed cleaner starting in the mid-90s; past and recent bottles of the '94 and '95 haven’t been Bretty to me. I like the older Beaucastels in spite of the Brett, but never thought it improved the wines in any sense. I like the '85 a great deal and haven’t found it as consistently Bretty as, say, the '89 or '90.
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This discussion does not work well for me… instead of making me delay opening a bottle to 2017, the opinions here make me want to open one and test it myself…