1989 Château Beychevelle

The 1989 Beychevelle repeats its performance from a blind tasting in London earlier in 2018. It has an old-school bouquet of dusky black fruit, morels and that light seawater note. The palate is medium-bodied with quite sharp tannin and rustic in style, featuring leathery red fruit and iron ore, though as I noted before, it has faded in recent years and I cannot see much benefit in cellaring this longer. Tasted from an ex-cellar bottle at the château .

The 1989 Beychevelle has plenty of dark berry fruit on the nose, touches of seawater and briary. Certainly very "old school" in style but I notice how it gains harmony in the glass. The palate is medium-bodied with well defined black fruit, quite fresh and edgy, dovetailing into more red fruit towards the second half. One can tell it must have been quite a precocious Beychevelle in its youth and though, it has faded in recent years, this 1989 remains charming. It should offer another decade's worth of drinking pleasure. Tasted blind at "Philip's Belated February Christmas Party."