1989 Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou St.-Julien 750 ml

Château Ducru-Beaucaillou is one of Bordeaux’s celebrated Super Seconds—a Second Growth widely seen as rivaling the First Growths. They’ve got one of the most gorgeous terroirs on the Left Bank, and as Christie’s Auction House wrote, “Many Bordeaux specialists consider this estate to be the quintessential Médoc wine.”

We first delved into the Ducru-Beaucaillou cellar to procure a wine for our exclusive Collector’s Club. That experience—tasting through perfectly aged Bordeaux with the Ducru team and our Bordeaux supplier—lit a fire in us. Robert Parker once listed Ducru-Beaucaillou as the St.-Julien with “The Most Potential for Long-Term Aging,” and we left that day determined to bring one of their fantastic library wines to our members. 

Today, we’re proud to share their perfectly aged 1989. The product of an outstanding Médoc vintage, it comes straight from the Ducru-Beaucaillou cellars, with perfect provenance. There have been no hand-offs, no middlemen. And because the wine was tasted by the winemaker, topped off, and recorked in 2011, it will hit your glass in pristine condition, exactly as the château intended. 

After 35 years, this is drinking beautifully, exuding the class and elegance that has ranked Ducru-Beaucaillou among Bordeaux’s best. Showing an enticing garnet color, the wine opens to perfumed tertiary notes of preserved cherries and black raspberries, spice box, leather, and truffles. It hits the palate with a heady intensity, with a core of dried black fruit melding seamlessly into savory notes of cedar, pipe tobacco, and dried herbs. The finish is fabulously long, showing the balance and vivacity to develop for another decade plus.

Château Ducru-Beaucaillou has some of the best terroir in all of St.-Julien, defined by its beaux cailloux (“beautiful pebbles”). Dotting the vineyards, these quartz pebbles force the vines to dig deep for water and nutrients. Adding to the hardship, the vineyards are planted at an exceptionally high density—10,000 vines per hectare—spurring intense competition between the vines. All of these factors combine to encourage the type of revelatory concentration and richness that keep us coming back to Ducru-Beaucaillou.