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. 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. (25/5/12, updated 8/12/12, 9/2/13, 11/7/20)
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