Château Branaire Ducru
Château Branaire Ducru, 4ème Cru Classé, St Julien, 2021
92/100
Inside Bordeaux
91-93/100
The Wine Independent
92/100
Vinous
Available Vintages
portfolio
2021
24x37.5cl
DP
£512.46
2021
6x75cl
DP
£241.22
2021
3x1.5L
DP
£253.22
Justerini & Brooks Tasting note
The pick of the St Julien UGC. Branaire Ducru is on a roll. Refined and classy, the 2021 displays a suave core of bright raspberry coulis and griotte fruit, vibrant, good mid-weight flavours, stylish and nicely textured. A more modern take for Branaire, this has plenty of guts and is framed by some ripe, well-judged tannins. Excellent effort. 66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot, 6.5% Cabernet Franc and 5.5% Petit Verdot.
delivery information
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DELIVERY
How much is delivery
Delivery is free to mainland Great Britain and other bonded warehouses for orders over £200 (inc. VAT) in value. For orders under the value of £200 destined for mainland Great Britain there is a delivery charge of £18 (inc. VAT).
All deliveries to mainland Great Britain coming from Cellarers will incur a delivery charge of £24 (inc. VAT). Cellarers Storage Charges.
Where are the wines stored and are they fully insured whilst in storage?
We store clients’ wines with a subsidiary company called Cellarers (Wines) Ltd, which is wholly owned by Justerini & Brooks but where clients’ wines are segregated from our own stock. The wines are stored at Octavian's industry-leading underground cellars in Corsham, Wiltshire, UK. All wines stored with Cellarers are individually labelled with clients’ details and are insured to current market value.
Can I ship outside of mainland Great Britain?
We offer regular shipments to Hong Kong from £90 per 9L case and £62 per 4.5L case. A discounted rate of £72 per 9L case may apply when shipping five or more cases to one address. Deliveries usually take approximately three weeks.
For deliveries to destinations other than mainland Great Britain or Hong Kong, please contact the Customer Relationship Team via email on justbrooksorders@justerinis.com for a quote.
Why can’t I request delivery of certain wines?
Most often, the reason you cannot request delivery of certain wines is that they are still ‘En Primeur’ and not yet in the country. Once they land in the UK, they will be available for Duty Paid Delivery. Click here for more information on buying En Primeur.
GUARANTEED PROVENANCE
Provenance in fine wine
When it comes to purchasing wine, provenance is of upmost importance. A wine’s history – where it’s sourced from and how it’s been stored – can have an enormous influence on the eventual enjoyment it provides. At Justerini & Brooks, we can trace nearly every case back to the domaine, estate or Château it originally came from; we ship from over 200 wine producers throughout the world.
Wines not bought directly from the vineyard are either sourced from trusted suppliers, with whom we share the same philosophy and rigour in buying, or from our own network of Cellarers customers. These customers’ wines are stored in optimal conditions in Octavian Corsham and, in the vast majority of cases, have been stored by us since the wine was first shipped. We do not purchase wine from auctions.
We feel it is equally important to for our customers that the case they buy and leave in storage with us is exactly the same case they subsequently have delivered. This may sound obvious and straightforward, yet we are one of very few merchants to have taken measures to ensure this.
We have created a system where every case is independent, thereby ensuring a trail of ownership and peace of mind for every customer.
The Journey
Justerinis ensures that every case of wine stored with Cellarers (Wines) Ltd has a unique identifier and customer’s name, almost unheard of in the industry as it is expensive to administer. These details are printed and placed on every case which is logged and recorded under your account name and kept in the world’s most renowned storage facility, Octavian Corsham.
This information is sent from our systems to the warehouse every day to ensure the trail of ownership is verified and upheld.
While customer reserves are stored in Corsham, our physical stocks are kept in Hoddesdon, further providing a geographical separation between customers’ wines with Cellarers and Justerinis’ own stock.
Further Reassurance
Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is a legally separate limited company from Justerini & Brooks which currently holds approximately £450 million worth of customer reserves. It is fully insured to catastrophic loss. Many merchants will state that wine in their care is fully insured, but in reality this is on an individual case basis with insufficient cover for total loss as this is prohibitively expensive. The cover provided by Octavian and Justerini & Brooks is unmatched.
Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is audited by PwC every year.
Critic Reviews
92/100
Jane Anson,
Inside Bordeaux
Bright, a little slim though the mid palate, but carefully expressed and finessed with appellation character, very much savoury Cabernet rose petals and cassis bud, with pencil lead and crayon character on the finish. 32hl/ yield, 50% new oak. Tasted twice.
drinking window 2026 - 2040
date of review 04/2024
92/100
Neal Martin,
Vinous
The 2021 Branaire Ducru, one of the smallest crops in recent years (32.5hL/ha) was bottled in early June. It has a clean and precise bouquet: blackberry, cedar, light pencil box scents and just a faint touch of undergrowth. It's certainly classic in style, yet displays more precision than you would have found in a Branaire a decade ago. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannins. Again, black fruit comes to the fore—graphite-infused black fruit, with a little more salinity than I recall from barrel. There’s a pleasing strictness here; the 2021 is linear, without the frills of the 2019 or 2020. Yet for those seeking traditional claret, this will fit the bill perfectly. Drink it over the next 20-25 years.
drinking window 2026 - 2048
date of review 02/2024
91-93/100
Lisa Perrotti-Brown,
The Wine Independent
Made from 66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 22% Merlot, 6.5% Cabernet Franc, and 5.5% Petit Verdot, the 2021 Branaire-Ducru is deep garnet-purple in color. It comes bounding out of the glass with bold scents of warm cassis, blackberry preserves, and ripe black plums, followed by hints of camphor, violets, black truffles, and tapenade, with a waft of wood smoke. Light to medium-bodied, the palate delivers impressive intensity with firm, fine-grained tannins and seamless freshness, finishing long with a mineral lift.
drinking window 2026 - 2035
date of review 05/2022
product details
Specifications
allergen information
This product may contain sulphites. Full allergen information is available upon request, please call our Customer Relations Team on +44 (0)20 7484 6430.
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