Château Beauséjour: Tasting & Drinking
Of all the premier grand cru classé châteaux in St Emilion I think it was Château Beauséjour that I came to last. It was as if the proprietors weren’t really that interested. The wines never appeared at tastings alongside Château Beau-Séjour Bécot and the other premier peers, and so while I got to grips with many of the wines of St Emilion Château Beauséjour wasn’t one of them. Then two things changed. First, I began (quite a few years ago now) travelling to Bordeaux more regularly, not just during the primeurs but at other times of the year, allowing me to broaden my tasting experience a little.
Second, Vincent Duffau-Lagarrosse and Christophe Redaud took the helm in 2006, and in 2009 they engaged the services of Nicolas Thienpont and Stéphane Derenoncourt. This meant that the wines started turning up at a number of tastings, such as Derenoncourt’s La Grappe tasting, where I have encountered the wines several times, and more recently I have tasted the wine at Château Pavie-Macquin, a reflection of the fact that Nicolas Thienpont consults here.
During this era I really got to grips with the wine, starting with the 2005 vintage, which was pretty smart. Having said that, I found the 2010 vintage, tasted at the primeurs, to potentially be superior to the 2005, while I found the 2014 to be on a similar level – which is not something you will usually hear me saying regarding the 2014 vintage – suggesting that perhaps getting Thienpont and Derenoncourt on board was a good decision. Subsequent vintages were of exceptional quality, with great wines in 2015 and 2018, excellent wines in 2019 and 2016, and even in 2017, the slope and position of the vineyards presumably having protected them from that year’s devastating frost.
