Château Beychevelle, 4ème Cru Classé, St Julien,

Produced from 39% Cabernet Sauvignon, 51% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc and 5% Petit Verdot, the 2014 Beychevelle didn't enjoy a good showing. Despite a historical imbalance favouring Merlot in the vineyard, something of an oddity in these parts, the Beychevelle team has enjoyed a run of success. Popularity in certain Asian markets as well as some fine efforts in recent vintages has seen Beychevelle's appeal and lustre grow, although price rises have hit the traditional British customer base. Anyway, we have been impressed with the wines in recent years, so we were slightly taken aback by the 2014. It's normally rather gentile style has been replaced by a rather harsh, charmless core of dark fruit, quite inky and atypical. Then the tannins kick in, and on this showing, they are rather coarse and uncouth. The lasting impression is of high acidity, coarse, dominating tannins, and dry notes of coffee. It may resolve itself in time, or it could have just been a bad sample - time will tell! * It is worth noting that we tasted at the St Julien UGC at the end of a very long day. We felt that the samples were not necessarily representative. Our notes are an honest account of what we tasted, however, we are sure that the wines are much better than our notes suggest.