Château DUCRU-BEAUCAILLOU 2022

Description

Yves Beck 100 points www.yvesbeck.wine

Dégusté le 17.12.2024 par Yves Beck

82% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Merlot

Majestueux, le bouquet de Ducru-Beaucaillou n’ouvre que des perspectives réjouissantes. Il appelle même la gourmandise dans un contexte complexe et imposant avec des nuances d’épices douces, de réglisse et de fèves de cacao complétées par des effluves de fruits rouges, de baies noires mûres, de cèdre et de graphite. Tout est très cohérent, rien n’est dominant, sauf les réjouissances ! Le toucher de bouche ne fait que confirmer les promesses olfactives. Le vin est dense, profond et soutenu par des tannins légèrement suaves conférant puissance et énergie. Une très fine austérité vient consolider le côté énergétique du vin et crée ainsi le lien entre tempérament, gourmandise et puissance. C’est un très grand Ducru-Beaucaillou qui rejoint les extraordinaires 2016, 2019 et 2020… entre autres ! Il est élégant, charmant, puissant, persistant et, bien évidemment, fin et harmonieux ! Quelle interminable finale et quelle énergie ; la performance est élevée et constante, du bouquet jusqu’en fin de bouche. Maintenant, il s’agit de patienter. Le vin a de nombreuses décennies devant lui, mais il sera intéressant de le goûter régulièrement… il faudra juste en avoir assez 🙂  2029-2057

Antonio Galloni 95-97 www.vinous.com
The 2022 Ducru-Beaucaillou is elegant and nuanced. Bright red/purplish fruit, rose petal, blood orange, mint and spice give the 2022 unusual brilliance. In most recent vintages, Ducru has been on the opulent side. The 2022, on the other hand, is strict and linear in construction, a wine that is more about persistence than size. Bright saline underpinnings extend the mid-palate into the striking, beaming finish. Harvest took place over four weeks, the longest ever, as opposed to the two weeks or so that is the norm. Yields were 30hL per hectare, down from the 35-37 typical in recent years.

Georgina Hindle 97 points  www.decanter.com (at UGCB tasting, Bordeaux Intercontinental Hotel, 21 Apr 2023)
Beautiful and beguiling nose, perfumed blackcurrants and dark fruits; damsons, plums, raspberries and rose petals. Lovely crunchy fruit, real bite and presence in the mouth. Excellent precision, tannins are succulent and ripe they fill the mouth with a juicy, intense granular texture. There is such depth to this – perfume, tobacco, earth, violets and concentrated fruits that have a verticality to them with an unprecedented 98% of Cabernet Sauvignon providing the support and the backbone. There is a crystalline purity to the fruit giving tension to the overall frame, it’s focused and driven all with excellent definition. This is not a wallflower of a wine – it’s charming and confident, strutting its stuff right now and giving you absolut St-Julien terroir and vintage markers in the glass with slate, graphite and liquorice salinity on show. Skilled winemaking on show.

Neal Martin 95-97 www.vinous.com
The 2022 Ducru-Beaucaillou contains less Cabernet than last year and is closer to the normal blend of the Grand Vin, picked between 7 September and 4 October – the longest harvest in their history. The IPT is 95. Matured in 100% new oak, the bouquet bides its time in the glass, almost reluctantly unfurling with scents of blackberry, briary, cigar humidor and sous-bois. At this nascent stage, it is more backward than its peers. The palate is undoubtedly one of the most dense and muscular that I have encountered over many years tasting at the estate, full-bodied with vice-like tannins. Continuing the theme of the estate’s other cuvées, there is a lovely Pauillac-like presence throughout, with graphite/pencil lead infusing the black fruit. The finish exerts a considerable grip and feels saline, almost briny on the aftertaste. This Leviathan Ducru-Beaucaillou threatens to overwhelm the senses, uncompromising in many ways, and it will patently take many years for the tannins to soften. I feel that it is only once in bottle that one will be able to gauge its trajectory.