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Goedhuis, May 2021, Score: 93-95
The high proportion of Merlot at this stately property creates a wine with a splendidly generous feel. Plenty of fruit compote, some sweet baked crumble, its joyously supple style lifts the spirits. The tannins are rounded, and the acidity fits in lightly beneath to show composure and class.
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Neal Martin, Jannuary 2024, Score: 94
The 2020 Beychevelle has an open-knit, very well-defined bouquet with pure black cherries, bilberry, veins of blueberry and crushed violet. There's just a touch of new oak still waiting to be assimilated. The palate is lavish and very ripe, displaying black fruit tinged with notes of fig and date, turning almost exotic toward the lascivious finish. Perhaps, for Beychevelle, this is modern in style. It's a world away from the slightly herbal showing in barrel, but bottle age ought to temper its hedonistic urges. Tasted blind at the annual Southwold tasting.
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Antonio Galloni, December 2022, Score: 96
The 2020 Beychevelle is a wild, exotic beauty. Blackberry jam, gravel, crushed rocks menthol and espresso ristretto give Beychevelle its flamboyant personality. All the elements are so well balanced in this full-throttle, hugely enjoyable Saint-Julien. The 2020 is lights out. Drink 2030-2055
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Antonio Galloni, June 2021, Score: 94-96
The 2020 Beychevelle opens with the most exotic bouquet imaginable. Wild flowers of all sorts, spice, lavender and inky dark fruit all saturate the palate. As always, Beychevelle is an overt, flamboyant wine, but all of the elements are so well out together. The 2020 is sexy, alluring and impossible to resist. Time in the glass brings out redder tonalities of fruit along with sweet floral notes that add striking inner perfume. Even as a barrel sample, I am so tempted to just drink it. Drink 2030 - 2055
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Wine Advocate, May 2021, Score: 94
Deep purple-black colored, the 2020 Beychevelle offers up vibrant notes of black raspberries, fresh black cherries and cassis, plus hints of wild sage, chocolate mint, rose hip tea and fallen leaves, with an exotic hint of Indian spices. The medium to full-bodied palate offers layers of crunchy black fruits with a firm, grainy texture and just enough freshness, finishing long and perfumed. Drink 2026-2046
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James Suckling, April 2021, Score: 94
Sweet-berry and tobacco character with blackberries and violets. It’s full-bodied with firm, polished tannins and a fresh finish. Very fine at the end.
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Decanter, May 2012, Score: 94
Smoke, grilled almond on the nose, even a touch of rubber from an edge of reduction. This has depth to black chocolate and bilberry fruit, it is well balanced and seductive. Enjoyable, it's pretty broad shouldered but it sits well within the successful run of vintages at Beychevelle. A yield of 47hl/ha. 18 months ageing. 55% first wine. (JA)
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Matthew Jukes, May 2021, Score: 18+
By comparison to the juicy, gregarious, fruit bomb that is Amiral de Beychevelle, Beychevelle itself is a coiled spring of a wine with a hair-trigger set to explode. But, this trigger is not going to be primed for at least ten years and this is because this wine is tense, firm, sour and combative. Mouth-watering and nervy with hints of mint on the finish, balancing the firm red fruit, this is a lovely wine with the sort of skinsy bitterness that I adore, but it is important to underline that you will have to like tanginess as much as I do to fall fully for this wine. Patience will reward you, but there will always be an underlying violet and sour cherry tang here so caveat emptor.
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Jancis Robinson, April 2021, Score: 16
Concentrated purple. Headily aromatic with mulberry perfume and just a hint of oak. Silky tannins and marked freshness. Neat and the opposite of opulent. Classic wine for the table. 13.5%. Drink 2028 – 2044
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Jeb Dunnuck, May 2021, Score: 95-97
Based on 51% Cabernet Sauvignon, 45% Merlot, and 4% Petit Verdot, the Grand Vin 2020 Château Beychevelle is a stunner that does everything right, offering a monster bouquet of black and blue fruits as well as candied violets, incense, flowers, and toasty oak. A ripe, full-bodied, incredibly sexy wine in every sense, it has a great mid-palate, ripe, velvety tannins, no hard edges, and a great finish. It's one of the more up-front, exotic wines in the vintage and should be accessible with just short-term cellaring.
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Wine Cellar Insider, May 2021, Score: 95-97
Dark garnet in color, the wine shows off its black currants, licorice, wet forest floor, tobacco leaf, creme de cassis and blue fruit on the nose effortlessly. Full-bodied, fresh, elegant, lifted and vibrant, the wine is refined, juicy, sweet and long, with an ending packed with ripe, red and black currants, silky tannins, spice and crushed stones from start to finish. Made from blending 51% Cabernet Sauvignon, 45% Merlot and 4% Petit Verdot , 13.45% ABV, pH 3.8. 55% of the harvest was used in the Grand Vin. 95-97
