Description
Château Branaire-Ducru, Saint-Julien, Grand Gru Classé
Just whispering “Grand Cru Classé en 1855” will put Bordeaux aficionados on alert, but offering one from a legendary vintage will rouse them from the deepest REM sleep. So, if you consider yourself an epicure of the Left Bank’s finest, well, ladies and gentlemen, today will bring you incalculable joy. After slumbering in a Bordeaux cellar for over a decade, today’s 2010 release from famed Château Branaire-Ducru is bound to sweep you off your feet.
Now 12 years removed from the vintage, most wine drinkers—even those who casually follow Bordeaux—are well aware of this legendary growing season. It’s a year universally recognized as legendary across the board. Furthermore, Saint-Julien was one of the epicenters of extraordinary grape quality, and prices reflect that with top châteaux Ducru-Beaucaillou and Léoville-Las Cases fetching over $350! So, you can either seek out those wines or trust us when we say this $125 beauty is everything one could expect from elite 2010 Bordeaux. It’s dark, generous, sleek, and chock-full of gravelly, cedar-smoke savor. This is what Grand Cru Classé is all about. Up to six bottles per person: Enjoy one now and (ideally!) uncork your others in five-year intervals.
BONUS: Want more Grand Cru Classé wine from a blockbuster vintage? How about Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s 2009 Château d’Armailhac for $120? We lucked into this parcel at the same time, and are only offering it as a supplement because quantities are far too small for a solo feature. Purchase up to three bottles here.
It should come as no surprise that a recognized château from the historic 1855 Bordeaux classification holds substantial history, and that’s certainly the case for Branaire-Ducru. In 1680, patriarch Jean-Baptiste Braneyre, fascinated with the gravelly clay terroir on the banks of the Gironde estuary, purchased part of the sprawling Beychevelle estate and eventually separated the property. His descendants later built a château in the early 1800s, and eventually passed ownership down to Gustave Ducru, a close relative. During the Ducrus reign, Château Branaire-Ducru was awarded Fourth (aka 4ème; Quatrième) Growth status, and thus, their legend was born.
Today, the estate is run by the Maroteaux family, who purchased the property in 1988 and quickly injected it with capital to restore it to its former glory. Their 60 hectares of vines are largely planted to Cabernet Sauvignon, followed by Merlot, Petit Verdot, and Cabernet Franc, and the average vine age hovers around the 35-year mark. Each unique vineyard plot is hand-harvested, hand-sorted, and then gravity fed into parcel-specific and varietal-separate stainless steel tanks. Following, the individual wines are masterfully blended and sent into premium French oak, 60% new, for no less than 18 months. Bordeaux icon Eric Boissenot is their consulting enologist.
We pulled the cork on Branaire-Ducru’s 2010 Grand Vin and decanted it for one hour before serving it up in large Bordeaux stems around 60-65 degrees. It is such a gorgeous and classy Grand Cru that’s equipped with a sleek frame thanks to a blockbuster vintage. The nose erupts with cassis, roasted plum, cigar box, pencil lead, clove, ripe black cherry, sweet oak spice, wet gravel, candied violet, and a delightful menthol-herbal component. The palate is medium-plus in body and sports impressive structure, but again, this is generously polished—zero edges exist here! Our bottle vanished quicker than I’d like to admit, and I think that speaks to its cellaring potential. Sure, it’s in a sweet spot right now, but there’s certainly another decade of positive evolution to be had. What a luxurious gem this is!
