Beauséjour Bécot 2023 75cl

The first vintage produced in the estate's highly functional new winery, the 2023 Beau-Séjour Bécot has turned out beautifully and looks likely to rival or surpass the brilliant 2022. Unfurling in the glass with notes of raspberries, dark berries and minty cherries mingled with notions of iris, wisteria and lilac, it's medium to full-bodied, layered and velvety, with a suave attack that prefaces a cool, complete core of fruit that's pure, perfumed and mineral, concluding with a long, saline finish. It's a blend of 77% Merlot and 23% Cabernet Franc that was harvested from September 7 to October 4, sub-block by sub-block.<br/>This beautifully situated 22-hectare estate, sitting on Saint-Émilion's limestone plateau, is emerging from a period of extensive restructuring (favoring high-quality massal selections), and now benefits from a state-of-the-art new winery, with vats adapted to each parcel's production and efficient refrigerations technology permitting the rapid cooling of the crop on reception. What has transformed this estate since 2018, however, has just as much to do with a change of approach. Long but gentle macerations, more judicious extraction and a much defter touch with the choice of new oak are delivering wines of much greater finesse and complexity, without any loss of intensity, and the quality of this superb terroir is now front and center in the glass. The run of quality continues with the 2023 vintage, which the estate's vineyards weathered without any appreciable signs of hydric stress to produce a beautifully suave and sensual wine of striking purity and perfume.<br/><br/>William Kelley<br/>