Angélus vertical of 20 vintages. Main observations were : 1/ Older vintages before the mid-2000s often suffered from drying tannin and showed a lot of extraction, 2/ Younger vintages quickly benefited from aeration hence decanting advised, 3/ the fruit profile became darker over time 4/ best vintage to drink today: 2004. All wines were directly poured with no prior decant and served in flights of 4. Tasting note: Dried tobacco leaves, leather, red cherry and dark cherry. Densely knit aromatically, even if not overly expressive. More fruity on the palate but with both lots of acidity and tannin. Not really well integrated. Tasting note: Not overly expressive, a bit of earth and leather, otherwise mostly red and some darker berry fruit with herbal overlays. Fresh and juicy palate again with a long finish, also finding tobacco here. Maybe balance could be better…

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In the new classification of St.-Emilion, justice was certainly served with the elevation of Angelus to premier grand cru classe status. No Bordeaux estate has been making as concentrated and consistently high quality wines as has Angelus since 1988. Even in the rain-plagued vintage of 1992, Angelus produced a wine of uncommon power, ripeness, and intensity. This estate is in many ways symbolic of what heights Bordeaux can achieve when a property is managed by someone as passionate and driven as Hubert de Bouard. As I have been writing for the last decade, these are wines to buy at first release; they can only go up in price given their quality. One of the four or five most concentrated wines of the vintage, this opaque, black/purple-colored 1993 offers an intensely fragrant nose of smoke, olives, chocolate, black fruits, hickory, and sweet, spicy oak. Amazingly rich and full-bodied, with massive extract, it is almost unbelievable that this wine could have been produced in a vintage such as 1993. Give it 3-4 years of cellaring, and drink it over the following 15-18 years.

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