Chateau Beychevelle St Julien 1988

Château Beychevelle St Julien 1988

Following our recent trip to Bordeaux, I was eager to dig into our extensive cellar collection and enjoy some vintage bottles from the producers that we visited. Such was the case with Château Beychevelle and the remains of this case from the 1988 vintage that I purchased on release. 

One of the learnings from our visit to Château Beychevelle, our tour of the estate, cellars, and library, was that the 1988 vintage was the last vintage release from previous owners, still practicing or making wine under the ‘old school’ techniques and practices. This added to the intrigue and suspense of tasting this bottle, now ‘vintage’ in more ways than just years. 

My recollection was that this was a bit uninspiring and perhaps lackluster on some of the earlier occasions, and perhaps it had surpassed its glory or optimal drinking days. I recall some what I suspected were its finer moments when I served it at wine dinners more than twenty-five years ago.

When I dug into the cellar exploring some of these older St Julien holdings, I found I had several bottles left, not just one, hence I was eager to try it. Much to my surprise, and delight, this was drinking very nicely, exceeding my expectations, and meeting or even surpassing my best recollections of early tastings. 

See my related experiencial tasting blogpost on drinking older vintage release wines.

Tonight's tasting was better than my two previous tastings which were in 2010 and 2016 when I wrote,"Medium bodied, slighly brickish color, nicely balanced soft earthy leather and tobacco tones predominating over the black cherry fruit on moderate, smooth tannin finish. Time to drink." Tonight this was showing a bit of barnyard funkiness on opening that burned off over the course of an hour, but still showing tangy tongue coating notes on the cherry fruit."

Clearly there was some bottle variation between the two earlier bottles and tonight, even though they were all from the same case with the exact same provenance.

Dark garnet colored, medium bodied, black berry fruits with earthy leather and tobacco notes with a pleasant black cherry accented cedar finish with smooth tannins.

RM 89 points.

https://www.cellartracker.com/barcode.asp?iWine=19132

http://unwindwine.blogspot.com/2016/01/vintage-st-julien-trio-highlight.html