Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou 2019

Name: Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou 2019
Brand: Chateau Ducru Beaucaillou
SKU: WRW7537AU

฿฿฿฿

SKU:WRW7537AU

WE99

JS98

WA96

Renowned

Rated 99/100 by Wine Enthusiast (top 2% of their reviews).

From our sommelier team

Researched by our team from producer and independent sources — not supplied by the seller.

A Saint-Julien second growth defined by Cabernet Sauvignon-led structure, precision, and a restrained, mineral style rather than raw power — long considered a benchmark 'Super Second.'

Why it tastes this way

Château Ducru-Beaucaillou is a Saint-Julien estate classified as a Deuxième Cru (Second Growth) in the 1855 classification and is widely regarded within the trade as a 'Super Second' — a wine that performs at a level above its official rank. The vineyard's

base planting runs roughly 70% Cabernet Sauvignon and 30% Merlot, though the Grand Vin's actual blend in a given vintage skews even more toward Cabernet Sauvignon (commonly 85-90%) after strict selection sends declassified lots to the estate's second wine.

This heavy Cabernet Sauvignon weighting is the source of the house style: firm, fine-grained tannin, pronounced graphite and crushed-rock minerality, and a cool, precise aromatic profile (blackcurrant, violet, cedar) rather than the riper, rounder register of more Merlot-driven Saint-Juliens.

Winemaking is meticulous and plot-by-plot, with aging in a high proportion of new French oak. The wines are built for extended cellaring and are known among Bordeaux specialists for tightening into a leaner, more mineral, more precisely delineated style in the modern era as selection criteria for the Grand Vin have become stricter.

Producer history

The estate's site has documented history stretching back to the 13th century, though its modern identity was shaped much later. The Johnston family, Bordeaux négociants, held the property before the 1929 financial crisis forced its sale to the Desbarat family.

Ownership changed again amid the instability of the following decade, and in 1941 wine merchant Francis Borie purchased Château Ducru-Beaucaillou, beginning the modern Borie era. Jean-Eugène Borie took over from his father in 1953, followed by François-Xavier

Borie from 1978 (formally after his father's death in 1998), and since 2003 the estate has been run by Bruno Borie, the third generation of the family since the 1941 purchase.

This near-continuous single-family stewardship across more than eighty years is unusual even by Bordeaux standards and underpins the estate's reputation for consistency.

Signature pairings

Herb-crusted rack of lamb
Lamb's fat content and savory char match the wine's firm Cabernet tannin, and the herb crust picks up the wine's own cedar and graphite tones without competing with them.
Grilled venison or wagyu striploin
A precise, mineral, tannic wine like this needs a lean but well-marbled red meat to resolve its tannin structure; venison's slight gaminess also echoes the wine's savory, non-fruit-forward register.
Aged hard cheese, e.g. Comté 24-month
This is a firm, high-tannin wine that does not pair well with high-chile-heat Thai dishes, where capsaicin would sharpen the tannin into bitterness; a dense, low-acid aged cheese is a safer match than forcing a spicy regional pairing.

About this bottle

Product information compiled from producer, importer and reference sources.

Saint-Julien Second Growth on 6–8m Günz gravel; 100% new French oak, ~80% Cabernet Sauvignon; 2019 regarded as a defining expression of the Bruno Borie era.

When Bruno Borie assumed control in 2003, he made a decision that runs counter to the prevailing Médoc consensus: he cut Grand Vin production from over 20,000 cases to just 6,000–8,000, selecting only 27% of total vineyard output for the label — a severity of selection rare even among First Growths. The 2019 is the clearest argument for that discipline.

The estate's core 50-hectare block, including the Les Sadons parcel planted in 1918, sits on a 6–8 metre bed of Günz gravel — quartz pebbles, lydian jasper, flint, and agatoids deposited by the ancient Garonne roughly two million years ago over Oligocene mud and Eocene limestone.

This gravel depth forces vine roots deep, concentrating mineral tension while the adjacent Gironde estuary moderates temperature extremes through four daily tidal movements.

The 2019 is approximately 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, harvested manually with multiple sorting passes including optical sorting, vinified parcel-by-parcel in variable-volume stainless steel tanks with a minimum 7-day maceration. Malolactic fermentation

was completed in concrete and stainless vats before 18–20 months in 100% new French oak barriques sourced from five cooperages — a counter-cultural commitment to maximum new oak that Borie has maintained against the broader Bordeaux drift toward restraint.

Unusually, this maximum-oak regime coexists with full organic farming certified from the 2018 vintage (ISO 14001, HVE3). The 2019 is described as regal and concentrated with flawless balance and graphite-laced cassis; drink from 2027 through the 2040s and beyond.