1989 | Château Angélus | Saint-Emilion Grand Cru

Tobacco, orange peel, baked earth, Christmas spice and sweet raspberry fruits dominate on the opening beats. Melted and silky tannins, we are in full cigar box, leather, sweet liquorice, black truffle and camphor territory. A brilliant wine, at its peak drinking, showcasing seductive tertiary flavours.

Reviews:

• Decanter: Even at 32 years old the tannins are dense, even chewy, still so much power. Here you get pure black truffle, along with olive paste, raspberry, enveloping violet and peony notes with some white pepper spice. 'Only' a grand cru classé at the time, showing just how much potential this site always had. Just 50 bottles left at the estate, recorked in 2019.

• Vinous: The 1989 Angélus is a vintage that I have tasted multiple times from various formats. It remains one of my favorite of that era. Still quite deep in color, it has a glorious, almost hubristic bouquet of layers of lush black cherries, cedar, sage and meat juice aromas as it moves assuredly into its secondary phase. The palate has always been very harmonious and smooth, the tannins finer than preceding vintages. There is lovely grip here, and black truffle and smoky notes appear on the finish. A quite marvelous Château Angélus. Tasted at the château.

Producer Information

Château Angélus is a well regarded wine estate based in the Saint-Emilion region of northeastern Bordeaux. The property sits on a coveted spot just west of Saint-Émilion town, on a gentle, south-facing slope on the Saint-Émilion plateau. It produces a sumptuous, long-lived Merlot - Cabernet Franc wine that is regularly highly rated by critics. The château was given its name due of the presence of nearby church bells (an "angélus" is a Roman Catholic prayer bell) that could be heard chiming from the original plots of vineyards. The current château now hosts a framework of small bells on its rooftop. The site that is now Château Angélus was added to the small estate of the de Boüard de Laforest family in 1920 and, by 1985, the estate had 20 hectares (50 acres) of vines. Hubert de Boüard de Laforest, took over the company reins at this time and began to introduce more modern approaches to viticulture and winemaking. He also ushered in a considerably more sustainable approach to viticulture – something of a rarity in Saint-Émilion at the time. The estate currently boasts a total of 39 hectares (96 acres) of vineyard. This is broken down into roughly equal portions of Merlot (50 percent) and Cabernet Franc (47 percent) with three percent Cabernet Sauvignon – proportions that are broadly reflected in the eponymous "grand vin" (the estate's flagship wine bearing the château name). The grand vin is aged in new oak for around 18 months prior to bottling. It then spends at least five years in bottle before it is released, but can be aged for much longer as Angélus's concentration, weight and structure reguarly allows the wine to evolve over decades. The château's second wine, Le Carillon d'Angélus, was first made in 1987 and accounts for about 30 percent of the total production. A third wine, No.3 d’Angélus, is made with predominantly Merlot (around 85 percent). In all, around 100,000 bottles were produced annually from the estate. The winery also produces Tempo d'Angélus, a wine made from vineyard plots acquired by Château Angelus in 2017. These are situated in the neighboring regions of Castillon-la-Bataille, Saint-Magne-de-Castillon and Sainte-Colombe, all southeast of Saint-Émilion.

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