Decanter at Home: Château Angélus masterclass – a philosophy of excellence

Last chance: You can still buy tickets to watch this Château Angélus virtual masterclass and taste the wines, via the Decanter at Home series – book here

Guiding us through this tasting was estate co-owner and CEO Stéphanie de Boüard-Rivoal, the eighth generation of the de Boüard family at Angélus.

After a first career in London in the financial industry, de Boüard came back to St-Emilion, and the estate where she grew up, in 2012, and told us, ‘it is now my turn to write a new chapter in our family history’.

Scroll down to see Jane Anson’s Château Angélus masterclass tasting notes and scores

That history dates back to 1782, and Jean de Boüard de Laforest, who was bodyguard to King Louis XVI and who bought the first plots of vines in Mazerat, the commune that at the time lay directly outside of the city walls of St-Emilion.

It puts Angélus among oldest family-run estates, still in the same family hands, in the whole of Bordeaux.

And yet, even with these 230 years of direct ownership, things have moved especially fast over the past few decades.

This is not only because it was promoted from Grand Cru Classé to Premier Grand Cru Classé B in 1996, and again to Premier Grand Cru Classé A in 2012, but also as a centre of groundbreaking viticultural techniques, from green harvesting in the 1980s to massal selection, organics and agroforestry today.

Details are everything at this property. Even the stunning winery, completed in 2014, was built by craftsmen known as the Compagnons du Tour de France with techniques that date back to the Middle Ages.

Alongside all this, Angélus has become one of the biggest properties in St-Emilion – today standing at 52 hectares (ha), although with its heart remaining the 27ha of classified vines that surround the main château building.

This Decanter masterclass covered all of these topics, as well as the pressures and rewards of running a family estate, the impact of becoming a First Growth, the opening of restaurants in both St-Emilion and Bordeaux city centre, and the reasons for the move to organic farming, plus the building of a second wine cellar specifically for the vinification of second wine Carillon d’Angélus and its sibling No.3 d’Angélus.

And we of course also covered the question that everyone was waiting for – how Angélus became involved with the James Bond franchise.

It was through a friendship between Hubert de Boüard (Stéphanie’s father), Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, the long-time producer of the Bond franchise. Did Stéphanie also attend the No Time to Die première in London? Yes – of course!.

She said the latest film featured Angélus 2005 – giving us another must-try vintage to add to the ones below.

Wines in this Château Angélus masterclass and their blends:

• Carillon d’Angélus, St-Emilion Grand Cru 2015: 50% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Franc, 10% Cabernet Sauvignon – 14% abv
• Carillon d’Angélus, St-Emilion Grand Cru 2016: 75% Merlot, 25% Cabernet Franc – 16% abv
• Château Angélus 2007: 62% Merlot, 38% Cabernet Franc – 13,5% abv
• Château Angélus 2009: 60% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Franc – 14,5% abv
• Château Angélus 2011: 60% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Franc – 14,5% abv
• Château Angélus 2012 (Premier Grand Cru Classé A): 55% Merlot, 45% Cabernet Franc – 14% abv

Change is ongoing at the estate

Throughout the discussion, we learned that there continues to be changes at Angélus, as de Boüard assures the continued success of the property.

Long-term technical director Emmanuelle d’Aligny-Fulchi, who joined Angélus as a trainee in 1990 before returning full-time in 1996, made her last vintage in 2020, with Benjamin Laforêt taking over as winemaker for the 2021 vintage alongside Hubert de Boüard.

Laforet will be overseeing the ongoing conversion to organics, and the development of the agroforestry project – ‘specifically concentrating on our root system, and how we can encourage the health of our underground system,’ said de Boüard in a separate conversation for a longer Decanter magazine profile on Château Angélus.

Château Angélus 2012

The masterclass tasting finished up with the 2012 vintage and its distinctive 21.7-carat-gold-embossed bottle.

‘This was an extremely important year for our family,’ said Stéphanie de Boüard.

‘By coincidence I had come back to join my father and my uncle, but more importantly it was the year that we received news of the promotion of the estate, plus we had begun the restoration works that took 26 months, and we were marking 230 years of history since our ancestor first bought the plots of vines that led up to all of this today.’

It’s a beautiful wine, with a full 45% of Cabernet Franc, one of the highest in memory and beaten only by the 2014 at 50%, not tasted here.

Angélus 2012 made a memorable finish to a lineup that took us through the modern history of an estate that has risen to the top of its appellation, and continues to set the pace.

See Jane Anson’s Château Angélus masterclass tasting notes and scores

Last chance: You can still buy tickets to watch this Château Angélus virtual masterclass and taste the wines, via the Decanter at Home series – book here

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