Last Sunday I spent my third day examining Bordeaux 2018, this time at Château Angélus in St Emilion. The grand vin here is very exciting. Angélus has wonderful perfume, great depth and is multi-layered. Brilliant wines have been made here by the de Boüard family in 2015 and 2016, but 2018 Château Angélus is certainly up there in quality with these vintages, if more in keeping with the style of the 2009 vintage. For me Carillon d’Angélus is a marvel. It is the most exciting Carillon I can remember tasting en primeur. The fruit is beautiful and the tannins are wonderfully refined.

Top to bottom, St Emilion has had an excellent vintage in 2016. Qualitatively it is the equal of 2015, but differs stylistically. There is a lot of that bright, beautiful fruit that characterized ’15, but there is more grip, freshness and texture this year. It all makes for an appetising vintage for aficionados of St Emilion. Prices are up – quelle surprise! And if you are unfortunate enough to reside in the UK then the Brexit fiasco has made things pricier still. Still if you’ve the spare cash, this is a vintage to consider. There are a great many St Emilion Grand Cru which are really excellent and the quality of the Grand Cru Classé and the Premier Grand Cru Classé [though very pricey] are extremely impressive. Overall this is an exciting and homogenous vintage. There’s decent quantity available too.

Hubert de Boüard is understandably delighted by the quality of the wine at Château Angélus in 2016. It is remarkable St Emilion that rivals the prodigious 2015. With price up 16% [33% in Sterling terms] on the ’15 the de Boüards clearly think they have something even better on their hands. Yet it is the quality of the other wines here that dazzled particularly this year. Carillon d’Angélus is no slouch. It is nicely layered with wonderfully refined tannins. Château Bellevue showed brilliantly. It has lots of beautiful perfumed fruit and a great texture. Château Daugay is enticing and open. It is all satin and black cherry tones currently. Château Roc de Boisseaux comes fully loaded with black fruits and is lots of fun. 2016 looks impressive across the range here.

I spent a second day in St Emilion, starting at Château Pavie-Macquin to taste the range of wines that Nicolas Thienpont crafts as well as listening to a review of the climatological aspects of the vintage. It was an opportunity to hear Stéphane Derenoncourt discuss his thoughts on 2016 as a ‘miracle’ vintage.  He sees it as the third in a trilogy of impressive vintages starting in 2014. Next up was Château Angélus to look at their stable of wines and discuss the vintage with Hubert de Boüard as well as examine the expanding range that he consults for. This gave me an opportunity to taste the first of a series of seriously impressive wines from the left bank in Pauillac and the Haut-Médoc. I then completed tastings at the Grand Cercle held at Château Montlabert. Here I assessed a dozen or so St Emilion Grand Cru Classés [generally exciting and homogeneous] as well as tasting more wines from the left bank appellations St Julien, Pauillac, Margaux and the Haut-Médoc. My overall feelings was how exciting this vintage is for both right and left bank, perhaps left especially.