2021 Beaulieu Vineyards 'Georges de Latour' Cabernet Sauvignon Private Reserve Napa Valley

Winemaker Notes:  This is a truly remarkable vintage of our iconic flagship wine. The bouquet is intense with fragrant notes of wild sage, blackcurrant, cedar, and fresh mint. The palate is expansive and full-bodied with a sumptuous mouthfeel, showcasing layers of ripe blackberry, redcurrant, and red rose petal alongside earthier tones of graphite, licorice root, gravely stone, and dark chocolate. Subtle baking spices from the French oak barrel aging provide sandalwood, clove, and Ceylon cinnamon notes, while the signature “Rutherford Dust” tannins are silky, polished, and fine-grained, finishing long with a cocoa powder texture. Slightly reserved upon release but incredibly drinkable, elegant, and pleasing, the tannins provide approachability with beautiful harmony and balance. There is significant presence, depth, and concentration in this Private Reserve, foreshadowing cellar-worthy potential that will continue to evolve, unfold, and develop across the next few decades.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM


James Suckling - "Intense aromas of iodine, blackcurrants, cedar, sandalwood and mint follow through to a medium to full body with silky tannins that spread across the palate and expand in a balanced and harmonized way. Hints of chocolate and fruit at the end. Some tar. Drinkable but better in a few years. Try in 2027 and beyond."


Jeb Dunnuck - "The flagship 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Georges De Latour Private Reserve is in the same ballpark as the 2019 and is an incredibly elegant yet concentrated 2021 that does everything right. Purple-hued, with ample cassis, wild sage, graphite, and darker chocolate-like aromatics, it picks up a Graves-like gravelly earth character with air and is full-bodied, has ripe, polished tannins, beautiful overall balance, and a great finish. As with many of the top 2021s, it’s a touch reserved and closed and needs 4-5 years of bottle age, but will drink well for 30 years. 98+"


Vinous - "The 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Georges de Latour is outrageously beautiful. A wine of statuesque build and class, the 2021 represents another major step forward for BV. Black cherry, plum, spice, new leather, menthol, mocha and gravel soar from the glass. This is an especially refined vintage for this flagship wine. Here, too, there is plenty of tannin, but it is not anywhere near as perceptible as it was in the past. Shorter macerations and gentler overall winemaking, including fewer lots vinified in barrel, have elevated the Georges meaningfully."


Decanter - "What a spectacular showing of this iconic wine in the terrific 2021 vintage. Deep ruby with a purple hue, it just exudes elegance and statesmanship. It has a noble quality to it that begins with its precise and lifted bouquet of dried rose petals, kirsch, Blackberry, and cassis fruit interlaced with sagebrush, sandalwood, and toasty cedarwood. Perfectly medium to full-bodied, showcasing a dazzling spectrum of silken red and black fruits redolent of strawberry, cherry, plum, and blackberry atop a substantial bed of taut, mineral-tinged tannins. A spine of racy acidity lifts the panoply of fruit, and the finish reveals a plethora of wild herbs, cast iron notes, pastille, and white pepper, nuanced by rich, toasty oak infused with toffee and vanilla bean. It is one of the most satisfying and immediately enjoyable expressions of the Georges de Latour Private Reserve in the last decade. Produced by Trevor Durling, the fourth winemaker to follow in the footsteps of the great André Tchelistcheff."


Wine Spectator - "Beaulieu Vineyard’s Georges de Latour has a long history, dating to its inaugural vintage of 1936. De Latour himself hired the legendary André Tchelistcheff as winemaker in 1938; Tchelistcheff would go on to steward the bottling for the next 35 years. Select vintages from his tenure across the 1950s, ’60s and early ’70s are considered benchmark wines for California Cabernet. After a rocky period through the 1980s and ’90s, BV is enjoying a renaissance, with a new winery built in 2008 and additional investment after the winery was acquired by Treasury Wine Estates in 2016. Winemaker Trevor Durling was hired in 2017 and hit a high note with this classic-rated 2021 in a superb vintage."

#2 of Wine Spectator's Top Wines of 2024