Anson: Tasting Château Angélus wines back to 1996

Jane Anson reports from a tasting of vintages spanning more than 20 years, at Decanter's Shanghai Fine Wine Encounter in November 2018.

To taste a vertical of Château Angélus wines back to 1996 is far rarer than you might think.

Being a family-run Château in St-Emilion with a history that dates back to 1782 clearly has its advantages, but perhaps rather surprisingly it does not ensure a wine cellar with bottles that date back to pre-French Revolution days.

‘For much of our history, it was considered a good thing to sell the entire production every year,’ managing director Stéphanie de Boüard-Rivoal has told me on several occasions.‘Even until very recently, my father and uncle would sell nearly every bottle they produced because we are a small property, and our production is a fraction of most big estates on the Left Bank.’Reassessing this whole approach was one of the first things Stéphanie de Boüard did when arriving back at her family property in 2012, as the eighth generation heading up this 39ha Château.She has now set in place systems to better ensure a true library of wines, and safeguard the history of what is, after all, the essential part of any wine estate – its bottles.

Tracing the history of Angélus is particularly fascinating because this is the only estate in Bordeaux to have undergone such a rapid promotion over the course of a few decades. It has passed from Grand Cru Classé, at the first round of St-Émilion’s ranking in 1955, to Premier Grand Cru Classé in 1996, and finally Premier Grand Cru Classé A in 2012 – when it was promoted alongside Pavie to join Cheval Blanc and Ausone at the top of the St-Emilion ranking.

It has withstood plenty of criticism for this, but it seems rather absurd to me to have a ranking where promotion and demotion are built into the DNA, and then to cry foul when the mechanism is shown to work.

However, all this meant our vertical in Shanghai was certainly something special – held with Stéphanie de Boüard-Rivoal, and showing six vintages of Château Angélus and two of Carillon d’Angélus, the estate’s second wine that dates back to 1987.

The philosophy has changed over recent years, with the purchase of new vines and a winery dedicated to the second wine due to open this year.

We started off with two relatively recent vintages of Carillon, from 2013 and 2012, which set the pace for the masterclass, where we looked at a pair of vintages side-by-side. This is a brilliant way to taste, and one I thoroughly recommend trying every now and then, not to compare two different years directly, but to better understand the personality of each one.

‘It’s certainly not the case that the easiest vintages always make the greatest wines,’ de Boüard-Rivoal told the audience in Shanghai. ‘The challenging vintages where the quality of the terroir and the quality of the winemaker come through are particularly satisfying, and can offer the biggest reward.’

Angélus has a clear signature – a luscious, generous taste that stands out in a line up.

It has power and force, but also a finesse that comes from the high proportion of Cabernet Franc in its blend.

No question that Hubert de Boüard’s careful, even obsessive, work in the vineyard has helped them over the past few decades to hone the personality of that Cabernet Franc, and allow it to raise the quality of the wine.

This side-by-side tasting clearly demonstrated the success of such a strategy.

Angélus fact file

• Estate size: 39ha
• Ownership: Eighth generation now in charge, headed up by Stéphanie de Boüard-Rivoal and her cousin Thierry Grenié de Boüard.
• Technical director: Emmanuel Fulchi since 1996.
• Vineyard composition: 50% Merlot, 47% Cabernet Franc, 3% Cabernet Sauvignon, planted on limestone clay soils.
• Began full conversion to organic farming in 2018.
• Ageing in 100% new oak barrels.

Jane Anson’s ratings for Angélus wines in this tasting: