1994 Château Angélus

Magnum. 30% Cabernet Franc, 70% Merlot. Ruby and nuanced colour. Mineral nose. Lots of evolution and lovely harmony. Power underneath – nothing feeble about any of these wines so far! (Back from youngest.) Slightly drying out but lovely length. Really quite rich and burgundian (high praise). Lots of mature pleasure. (JR)

This wine had the most extraordinarily youthful concentration and barely any suggestion of age at the rim. Knowing the vintage was not usually one of the most concentrated, it made me wonder in retrospect whether the must had been concentrated? The wine was made just in the run up to the 1996 St-Emilion classification when Angélus was promoted to a top Grand Cru Classé, so presumably Hubert de Bouard was pulling out all the stops. With all of its flesh (and quite a lot of sediment) and heady, sweet, spicy aromas it was noticeably different from all the Cabernet-based wines. The strangely stolid, fossilised character I noted when tasting an Angélus vertical was still there although the sweetness almost makes up for it. (JR)

Very deep crimson with a pale rim. Hint of herbaceousness on the nose. Full but simple. No great depths. Solid, a bit stodgy. Perfectly healthy but just a bit of a blob. Tannins have largely faded but the fruit left is a bit static. (JR)