92pts Wine Spectator

Shows outstanding structure and definition. New oak comes through in the coffee and plum aromas and the palate is firm and concentrated, with delicious blackberry flavors. Hold until 2000 for it to soften and bloom. --Ducru-Beaucaillou vertical.

About the Wine

This is a little softer than the 1986, with coffee, plum and cassis notes. It’s highly appealing right now, sweet and caressing as it opens in the glass, but this is one to drink within the next five to 10 years. The exact blend was not recorded, so the blend shown reflects the vineyard plantings, with 5% Petit Verdot.

About the Winery

For 300 years, six families have nurtured an indelible bond with Château Ducru-Beaucaillou. They are forever captives of this prestigious estate, be they named Desjean, Bergeron, Ducru, Johnston, Desbarat, or Borie. Its families were never short of praise for it. Over the decades, this devotion has managed to overcome all that is accidental or fleeting, as if passion perfected Nature's opus. 

Château Ducru-Beaucaillou owes its name to its "beautiful pebbles" ("beaux Cailloux", in French) that geologists refer to less romantically as Gunzian gravel. These quartz pebbles were deposited by the ancient Garonne at the beginning of the early Quaternary period, some two million years ago. It suffices to take a walk through the vineyards to make rich lithological finds. Lydian jasper from the Pyrenees, flint, quartz, agatoids... These Gunzian gravels make for soils that are poor in plant nutrients. But it is their very agrological paucity that guarantees the qualitative excellence of the wines. A choice of nature.