Keith Levenberg
Keith Levenberg
This is the first Belair I've had since it became Belair-Monange with the addition of the former Ch. Magdelaine. They also quadrupled or quintupled the price at the same time so I actually had no intention of ever buying one again, but I guess the price hike didn't stick so well as HDH had these on sale recently for $80. That's still about twice what I ever paid for Belair, but Belair might be my favorite St.-Emilion of all, so that was enough to get me to fold. At least for this one bottle. (Since it's Bordeaux, the financial analysis has to come first. Now onto the wine.)
Robert Parker's tasting note calls this "a tribute to this great terroir that was poorly managed and exploited prior to the family of Jean-Pierre Moueix taking over," which is kind of weird since the Moueix family has been making Magdelaine forever and most of the people who have complained about the style of Belair under Pascal Delbeck haven't had any kinder things to say about the style of Magdelaine. Parker himself has sort of damned Magdelaine with the faint praise (in his book) of being an "elegant," "restrained," and "finesse-styled" wine and given it respectable marks but never as high as the 95 rating he bestowed on this 2012. Perhaps he deems the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
To me, the personality of this wine is far more along the lines of the old Chateau Belairs than Magdelaine. In fact it is similar enough to the old Belairs that the notion of some "rejuvenation" here under the Moueix family strikes me more as an invention for the sake of The Narrative than anything you can deduce from what's in the glass. Belair has distinguished itself over the years with a deep black-fruited complexion combined with a snappiness that's almost peppery and a gravelly mineral element, all on a slender frame. All of those characteristics are here as well albeit in more primary form and the snappiness achieved without the overt green-pepper pyrazine of some of the older Belairs, but still present just the same. Magdelaine I always found more red-fruited, the minerality more iron-like. I don't see any of those signatures here.
If there is a major departure from the old Belairs it may come in the form of more robustness in the structural department. I am not sure this will ever turn silky--the sensation is like you'd taken the old Belairs and fiddled with the equalizer dials to crank up the thickness of the grape-skins. But when you hear talk of "rejuvenated" properties in Bordeaux the first thing you think of is ripeness and oak, and I don't sense a serious amount of fiddling in those departments. Perhaps the ripeness level is more uniform here on account of a stricter selection (lots of purity to the black-fruit flavor here, none of the animal or vegetable that emerges at the far ends of the spectrum--at least not yet) but the ripeness is still in the familiar zone. If you want to see some of those wilder flavors on full display, the 1995, 2000, and 2004 Belair are all fantastic to drink right now.
But I'm a big fan of the 2012 Bordeaux vintage in the Right Bank and Graves and love the fact that you can pick up some of the top names at half the price they would sell for in vintages that are great in the Medoc but NOT so great on the Right Bank.
Robert Parker's tasting note calls this "a tribute to this great terroir that was poorly managed and exploited prior to the family of Jean-Pierre Moueix taking over," which is kind of weird since the Moueix family has been making Magdelaine forever and most of the people who have complained about the style of Belair under Pascal Delbeck haven't had any kinder things to say about the style of Magdelaine. Parker himself has sort of damned Magdelaine with the faint praise (in his book) of being an "elegant," "restrained," and "finesse-styled" wine and given it respectable marks but never as high as the 95 rating he bestowed on this 2012. Perhaps he deems the whole greater than the sum of its parts.
To me, the personality of this wine is far more along the lines of the old Chateau Belairs than Magdelaine. In fact it is similar enough to the old Belairs that the notion of some "rejuvenation" here under the Moueix family strikes me more as an invention for the sake of The Narrative than anything you can deduce from what's in the glass. Belair has distinguished itself over the years with a deep black-fruited complexion combined with a snappiness that's almost peppery and a gravelly mineral element, all on a slender frame. All of those characteristics are here as well albeit in more primary form and the snappiness achieved without the overt green-pepper pyrazine of some of the older Belairs, but still present just the same. Magdelaine I always found more red-fruited, the minerality more iron-like. I don't see any of those signatures here.
If there is a major departure from the old Belairs it may come in the form of more robustness in the structural department. I am not sure this will ever turn silky--the sensation is like you'd taken the old Belairs and fiddled with the equalizer dials to crank up the thickness of the grape-skins. But when you hear talk of "rejuvenated" properties in Bordeaux the first thing you think of is ripeness and oak, and I don't sense a serious amount of fiddling in those departments. Perhaps the ripeness level is more uniform here on account of a stricter selection (lots of purity to the black-fruit flavor here, none of the animal or vegetable that emerges at the far ends of the spectrum--at least not yet) but the ripeness is still in the familiar zone. If you want to see some of those wilder flavors on full display, the 1995, 2000, and 2004 Belair are all fantastic to drink right now.
But I'm a big fan of the 2012 Bordeaux vintage in the Right Bank and Graves and love the fact that you can pick up some of the top names at half the price they would sell for in vintages that are great in the Medoc but NOT so great on the Right Bank.