Château Belle-Vue: Tasting & Drinking
I first encountered the wines of Château Belle-Vue in the late 1990s; I recall tasting early vintages, long before I began publishing Winedoctor, and I was impressed (despite having initially confused the estate, I have to confess, with the better-known Château Bellevue in St Emilion). The wines were thus clearly successful from the outset. Despite the tragic death of Vincent Mulliez at a very young age, the estate seems to have only grown stronger.
Those vintages in which Vincent had a hand, certainly the 2009 vintage, and tenuously the 2010 vintage (he passed away before harvest got underway) were the estate’s strongest. Wines such as these are enough to put any Haut-Médoc estate on the map, and so we must give Vincent appropriate credit. But Isabelle Mulliez also deserves much praise; she has overseen the élevage of the 2009 vintage, and has almost complete responsibility for the 2010 vintage. That these wines are so strong is also, especially in the case of the latter, down to her dedication.
Perhaps even more impressive, however, was the estate’s subsequent performance in vintages where the growing season and harvest weather conspired against the Bordelais. In both the 2011 and 2012 vintages, in a sea of vinous awkwardness, the wines of Château Belle-Vue shone out as if they were beacons. The wines of 2011 were broadly clunky, green or hard-going, while the 2011 Château Belle-Vue was perfumed and crystal-clear, with well defined fruit. In 2012, a vintage where most wines at the cru bourgeois level were appropriately light in tannin and for very early drinking, the 2012 Château Belle-Vue was a rare example of a wine with a little more structure, one that could easily see out a few years in the cellar. This was an impressive result in 2012.
Subsequent vintages have only served to underline these earlier successes. The 2015 was very good in deed, the 2016 exceptional, and I would not complain if I were poured a glass of the 2018, 2019 or 2020 vintages. All in all this is a top Haut-Médoc estate, and for that we have the late Vincent Mulliez, his widow Isabelle Mulliez and their stalwart technical director and then consultant Vincent Bache-Gabrielsen to thank. Today, however, none of these three remain at the domaine, and while I initially hoped that quality would be maintained by the new proprietors, Treasury Wine Estates, it appears that the estate now feeds exclusively into Penfolds projects, and the last vintage of Belle-Vue I was fortunate enough to taste was the aforementioned 2020. (13/2/15, updated 10/8/22, 4/4/26)
