Château Haut-Beauséjour: Tasting & Drinking
Over the years I have tasted a handful of vintages from Château Haut-Beauséjour. The wines have often struck me as competent, rather full-bodied in character, with good fruit, but there has always been a tendency for the wines to display a rather robust and solid frame. They seemed to me to have a rather old-school character for that, with a style rich in colour, substance and structure, but which was missing a number of other elements, principally excitement, purity and most of all finesse. Nevertheless I always thought they would age well, and they seemed like attractive propositions at the right price.
I previously wrote that with continued effort and investment from the Rouzaud family this would remain a château to watch. Of course such a statement now no longer applies, the property having been sold in 2017 to Pierre Rousseau, equally proprietor of Château Laffitte-Carcasset. Nevertheless the wines remain interesting, the 2019 tasted during the primeurs, at home in Scotland rather than in Bordeaux, a strange consequence of the Europe-wide lockdown following the appearance of Covid-19, showed very well in comparison to preceding vintages including the rather attractive 2016. Similarly I thought the 2020 vintage, as well as the 2022, showed quite well, with plenty of youthful fruit character when tasting the wines from barrel. Strangely, more recent vintages do not seem to have come my way. (25/5/12, updated 8/12/12, 9/2/13, 11/7/20, 17/12/25)
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