Château Beauséjour 2005

Mineral, vanilla bean and blackberry on the nose follow through to a medium-to-full body, with a solid core of fruit and a medium finish. Racy and well-constructed. Best after 2009.

Getting close to ready, you find tobacco, olives, red fruits and crushed stones without effort. There is a strong salty character to the tannins, and freshness in the juicy, red plum finish. The tannins are still noticeable, so give this another 3-5 years before pulling a cork.

The 2005 Château Beausejour (Duffau-Lagarrosse) is beautiful, and I think is a step up over the Château’s 2001. A healthy ruby/plum hue, with no sense of lightening, is followed by a beautiful perfume of red and black fruits, spice-box, tobacco, and white truffle-like nuance. With the vintage’s dense, focused, inward style, it has notable freshness, fine tannins, and a great finish. It’s a beautiful, powerful, yet elegant expression of the fabulous terroir. Enjoy bottles anytime over the coming 15 years.

Medium ruby with bluish highlights. Spicy bouquet, rose scent, wild cherries, indicating nice depth. Firm grip on the palate, fleshy, powerful muscles, rustic yet full of character.

Medium ruby with bluish highlights. Spicy bouquet with notes of rose, wild cherries, suggesting lovely depth. Firm attack on the palate, fleshy, powerfully built, rustic yet full of character.

Hints of bricking around the edges of the wine, still firm ruby at the core. Aromatics of sandalwood, cedar, liquorice and fennel, followed by gentle autumnal fruit; this has complexity and effortless charm. So much pleasure here, and you feel it’s just at the very beginning of its drinking crescendo. A masterclass in limestone, just begging to be paired with food. Far less focused and concentrated than you would find this wine today, and at this point it was four years away from Nicolas Thienpont arriving as director, but the power of the terroir shines through.

A blend of 76% Merlot, 14% Cabernet Franc, and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2005 Beausejour Duffau-Lagarrosse has a deep garnet-brick color. It needs a lot of shaking and swirling to awaken subtle scents of cigar box, underbrush, and dusty soil, giving way to a core of dried mulberries and preserved cherries, plus a waft of cumin. The full-bodied palate has a racy backbone invigorating the densely laden, muscular black fruit and earthy layers, supported by grainy tannins, finishing long and minerally. A gorgeous wine with a long life ahead of it!

Youthful color, oak still quite intense, plenty of freshness, red-fruit notes, fairly firm, clean tannin, but with moderate complexity.

Bad bottle Wine with a very disappointing evolution. The palate lacks flavor and brightness even though the substance is there. I recommend getting rid of it.