Lower Your Sails Again: Beychevelle 1905-2015

BY NEAL MARTIN | JANUARY 14, 2025

I begin with an apology. After detailing the puerile teenage ritual of “mooning” in the introduction of my 2023 article on Château Beychevelle, I received one or two messages from shocked readers who could not understand why one would want to do that. I have no idea. We all do idiotic things when we’re kids. Thankfully, nobody was showing their derrière when the estate hosted a splendid dinner to celebrate the 30th harvest overseen by managing director Philippe Blanc. I had been planning to journey down to Bordeaux the following week, but when advised that the vintages were worth altering my schedule, I tweaked my itinerary. In the end, this tasting stretched back almost 120 years and featured a vintage I had never encountered in my career. Vintages were selected numerically, that is to say, all those ending in “five,” unless the cellar had no bottles, in which case, alternatives were chosen (such as 1964 and 1921).

I am not going to retread the history of the château, nor the winemaking, since this was detailed in my previous article.

Here are a few takeaways from the tasting.

Firstly, perhaps their second wine, Amiral de Beychevelle, is underrated? I was pleasantly surprised how well the 2005 and 2010 showed, and they were actually superior to some of the off-vintage Grand Vins. Secondly, the 2015 Beychevelle is a benchmark modern-day vintage for Saint-Julien, where quality became more consistent. I thoroughly enjoyed the 2005 Beychevelle, however, it is interesting to compare the two side-by-side—the 2015 is imbued with more finesse and finer tannins, indicative of more precise viticulture and vinification. The older vintages come from an era when Beychevelle was not firing on all cylinders. The 1985 Beychevelle failed to pass muster. It felt completely disjointed, with a dominant veneer of oak and an ill-fitting Rhône-like finish. I actually preferred the 1975, a vintage that yielded tough wines on the Left Bank with a hardness that never really disappeared. The 1964 Beychevelle derives from a vintage when rain affected the harvest in the Médoc, and it comes across as slightly hollow and heavily chaptalized.