Along with Palmer and Pichon-Lalande, the 2012 Château Ducru-Beaucaillou is one of the very top three wines to be found in the Left Bank and superior to any of the First Growths in this vintage. Due to all the...
Along with Palmer and Pichon-Lalande, the 2012 Château Ducru-Beaucaillou is one of the very top three wines to be found in the Left Bank and superior to any of the First Growths in this vintage. Due to all the difficulties during the flowering, the 2012 yields at Ducru are the smallest (along with 2011) in the last twenty-five years at the property and came in just under thirty hectoliters per hectare. The merlot was collected here between the 3rd and 5th of October and the cabernet sauvignon between the 6th and the 10th, so the harvesting teams here did not come up against the pressure of the heavy rains that began on the 17th of the month and continued for the remainder of the autumn. Bruno Borie noted that, “as the cabernet sauvignon was really exceptional this year, we chose to include more of it in the grand vin than we normally would do” and the cépages of the 2012 Ducru-Beaucaillou is ninety-one percent cabernet sauvignon and nine percent merlot in 2012. This utterly classic wine comes in at an even thirteen percent alcohol and will be raised in ninety-five percent new wood for its first eighteen months of elevage and then racked into one wine barrels for the remaining twelve months of barrel aging prior to bottling. The deep and absolutely stunning nose offers up a superb blend of dark berries, cassis, tobacco leaf, complex, gravelly soil tones, espresso, cigar smoke and a nice base of cedary, spicy new wood. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, pure and complex, with a rock solid core of fruit, ripe, beautifully-integrated tannins, excellent focus and balance and a very long, pure and vibrant finish. This is a great, great wine in the making! (Drink between 2025-2065)