Tasting Notes & Reviews:
Please refer to this fantastic youtube video from The Wine Archive on a recent tasting of The Angelus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UdGM2Ihjmo
Chateau Angelus: Producer Profile (Courtesy: Decanter.com)
With high-profile associations including a high-grossing film franchise and various Michelin-starred restaurants, Château Angélus clearly enjoys being in the limelight. But what’s the story behind this acclaimed St-Emilion estate and its distinctive label?
Moneypenny, James Bond, Q. Not a bad trio for your wine to share the screen with in its latest cameo. I’ll try not to give too many spoilers if you haven’t yet seen No Time To Die, but I don’t think it gives too much away to say that Bond can’t resist swiping two generous glasses of Château Angélus (2005, although you don’t see the vintage on screen) for himself and Moneypenny from a bottle that Q had carefully opened for his date later that night.
This is the third Bond film in which Angélus has made an appearance; the 1982 was drunk by Vesper Lynd and Bond on the train to Montenegro in Casino Royale, while the 2005 vintage can be spotted in Spectre.
The association with Bond has taken the already-famous label – pale yellow, distinctive black writing surrounding a golden bell – to an audience of billions worldwide. So far, so clever product placement.
But the bell, as with so much of the story of this wine, is not just smart marketing but an authentic symbol of the roots and location of the winery itself. It has been on every Angélus label since the 1945 vintage, and is a reference to the bells that you can hear from this spot – on the northwestern edges of St-Emilion. Here, in the biggest of the communes that surround the town, to its west, there are records of vines growing as far back as the 12th century.
The vines are on south-facing slopes that follow a natural amphitheatre shape, from where you can hear the ringing bells of three neighbouring church towers – belonging to the Mazerat chapel, St-Martin-de-Mazerat church and the main St-Emilion church.
Even the name Angélus is a reference to these bells ringing out the call to the Angelus prayer, which used to punctuate the working day in the morning, noon and evening. There are very few family-owned estates in Bordeaux that have been in the same hands since before the French Revolution. Still fewer that have gone on to become classified châteaux in Bordeaux rankings – on either bank, Left or Right.
And yet Château Angélus has been owned by the Boüard de Laforest family since 1782, when Jean de Boüard de Laforest bought a plot of vines in St-Martin-de-Mazerat. In 1795, Jean’s daughter Catherine married Charles Souffrain de Lavergne, whose family had a plot of vines in the same village, and the couple moved to Mazerat.
The estate at the time was known as Château Mazerat, and continued to be known under that name until the early 20th century, when a neighbouring property, Clos de l’Angélus, was bought by Maurice de Boüard de Laforest, who had inherited the Mazerat estate. The new name was used as an alternative to Mazerat at first, then for the whole estate from 1945.
Today run by eighth-generation Stéphanie de Boüard-Rivoal, Angélus has been a premier grand cru classé A of the St-Emilion ranking since the 2012 vintage.
It’s a property where things have moved fast in recent years – because of its promotion in the ranking, but also due to a host of new viticultural techniques, and stunning new cellars that were built by craftsmen known as the Compagnons du Tour de France, using techniques that date back to the Middle Ages.
It’s also seen a significant expansion in its footprint of vines, today standing at 52ha. This makes Angélus one of the biggest properties in the appellation, although at its heart are the 27ha of classified vines surrounding the main château building.
In some ways, Angélus has remained extremely stable over the past century.
It was one of the first estates in St-Emilion to use a high percentage of Cabernet Franc, dating right back to the 1920s, for the rather lovely reason that owner Maurice de Boüard de Laforest’s wife was called Elizabeth Bouchet, and Bouchet is an old French synonym for Cabernet Franc.
To honour her, Maurice upped plantings of the grape to 45% of total plantings in the 1920s. Today, its wines continue to have some of the highest proportions of Cabernet Franc in St-Emilion, bringing a distinctive sculpted, floral perfume and fresh structure to the fleshy, creamy and welcoming black fruits that are such a signature of Angélus.
At the same time, the style has unquestionably evolved over the past few decades. Stéphanie’s father, Hubert de Boüard, dates the beginning of these style changes to 1980, when his professor at the oenology research department of the University of Bordeaux, Emile Peynaud, visited the estate. One of France’s most famous oenologists in the 20th century, Peynaud tasted through a range of his student’s wines, and politely murmured his appreciation. But it was only when de Boüard brought out two older vintages from the cellar, the 1953 and 1955, that he really became animated.
‘Young man, there is real potential for this estate,’ de Boüard remembers Peynaud saying. ‘You have something important to do here.’ And ‘it was a message I have never forgotten’, he says. De Boüard had begun working alongside his father, taking over fully in 1985.
He was one of the key winemakers at the time, alongside the likes of Michel Rolland, Christian Moueix and Michel Delon, to experiment with new ways of achieving full ripeness in the grapes. Techniques included green harvesting (dropping fruit before it becomes ripe, halfway through the season, in order to concentrate the fruit left behind), raising the surface of the leaf canopy to expose the grapes to more sunlight, and increasing the density of plantings to increase competition for water and therefore driving roots deeper.
The first sorting tables were introduced at Angélus in 1986, a full decade before many other estates, and the old drainage systems were cleaned up and improved. ‘The biggest impact this had,’ says de Boüard, ‘was on the Cabernet Franc.’ Until this point, both Merlot and Cabernet Franc had been harvested at the same time, but de Boüard found that leaving the Cabernet Franc to reach full ripeness, particularly on the unusual soil where it is planted – with sandy loam topsoil and a dense clay underneath – gave extraordinary power and concentration.
‘This is our signature,’ he says, ‘and it gives the wines the distinction and character that is the expression of a truly great terroir.’
Exploring biodiversity
This is an estate where details count. In the vineyard, although many of the changes introduced in the 1980s are no longer the right ones in the era of a warming climate, the obsessional attention to detail is still a marker of the property.
After years of groundwork increasing biodiversity across the property, Angélus has begun the conversion to organic farming, starting with the 2021 vintage. An agroforestry project has also been ongoing for the past six years, with the planting of oak, beech, plum, apple, pear and about 15 other species of trees among the plots of vines.
In the cellars, the wine is fermented in a range of oak and stainless steel vats for the Merlot, and concrete tanks for the Cabernet Franc. Ageing takes place for up to 22 months in a mix of fine-grained French oak barrels – each with different levels of toasting for the Merlot and the Cabernet Franc, and larger-sized oak casks for the Cabernet Franc, introduced over recent vintages to ensure a softer balance of oak to fruit.
Long-term winemaker Emmanuelle Fulchi, who joined Angélus as a trainee in 1990 before returning full-time in 1996, made her last vintage in 2020, with Benjamin Laforêt taking over as technical director for the 2021 vintage alongside Hubert de Boüard de Laforest. He will be overseeing the continued conversion to organics, and the development of the agroforestry project.
Please refer to this fantastic youtube video from The Wine Archive on a recent tasting of The Angelus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UdGM2Ihjmo
Chateau Angelus: Producer Profile (Courtesy: Decanter.com)
With high-profile associations including a high-grossing film franchise and various Michelin-starred restaurants, Château Angélus clearly enjoys being in the limelight. But what’s the story behind this acclaimed St-Emilion estate and its distinctive label?
Moneypenny, James Bond, Q. Not a bad trio for your wine to share the screen with in its latest cameo. I’ll try not to give too many spoilers if you haven’t yet seen No Time To Die, but I don’t think it gives too much away to say that Bond can’t resist swiping two generous glasses of Château Angélus (2005, although you don’t see the vintage on screen) for himself and Moneypenny from a bottle that Q had carefully opened for his date later that night.
This is the third Bond film in which Angélus has made an appearance; the 1982 was drunk by Vesper Lynd and Bond on the train to Montenegro in Casino Royale, while the 2005 vintage can be spotted in Spectre.
The association with Bond has taken the already-famous label – pale yellow, distinctive black writing surrounding a golden bell – to an audience of billions worldwide. So far, so clever product placement.
But the bell, as with so much of the story of this wine, is not just smart marketing but an authentic symbol of the roots and location of the winery itself. It has been on every Angélus label since the 1945 vintage, and is a reference to the bells that you can hear from this spot – on the northwestern edges of St-Emilion. Here, in the biggest of the communes that surround the town, to its west, there are records of vines growing as far back as the 12th century.
The vines are on south-facing slopes that follow a natural amphitheatre shape, from where you can hear the ringing bells of three neighbouring church towers – belonging to the Mazerat chapel, St-Martin-de-Mazerat church and the main St-Emilion church.
Even the name Angélus is a reference to these bells ringing out the call to the Angelus prayer, which used to punctuate the working day in the morning, noon and evening. There are very few family-owned estates in Bordeaux that have been in the same hands since before the French Revolution. Still fewer that have gone on to become classified châteaux in Bordeaux rankings – on either bank, Left or Right.
And yet Château Angélus has been owned by the Boüard de Laforest family since 1782, when Jean de Boüard de Laforest bought a plot of vines in St-Martin-de-Mazerat. In 1795, Jean’s daughter Catherine married Charles Souffrain de Lavergne, whose family had a plot of vines in the same village, and the couple moved to Mazerat.
The estate at the time was known as Château Mazerat, and continued to be known under that name until the early 20th century, when a neighbouring property, Clos de l’Angélus, was bought by Maurice de Boüard de Laforest, who had inherited the Mazerat estate. The new name was used as an alternative to Mazerat at first, then for the whole estate from 1945.
Today run by eighth-generation Stéphanie de Boüard-Rivoal, Angélus has been a premier grand cru classé A of the St-Emilion ranking since the 2012 vintage.
It’s a property where things have moved fast in recent years – because of its promotion in the ranking, but also due to a host of new viticultural techniques, and stunning new cellars that were built by craftsmen known as the Compagnons du Tour de France, using techniques that date back to the Middle Ages.
It’s also seen a significant expansion in its footprint of vines, today standing at 52ha. This makes Angélus one of the biggest properties in the appellation, although at its heart are the 27ha of classified vines surrounding the main château building.
In some ways, Angélus has remained extremely stable over the past century.
It was one of the first estates in St-Emilion to use a high percentage of Cabernet Franc, dating right back to the 1920s, for the rather lovely reason that owner Maurice de Boüard de Laforest’s wife was called Elizabeth Bouchet, and Bouchet is an old French synonym for Cabernet Franc.
To honour her, Maurice upped plantings of the grape to 45% of total plantings in the 1920s. Today, its wines continue to have some of the highest proportions of Cabernet Franc in St-Emilion, bringing a distinctive sculpted, floral perfume and fresh structure to the fleshy, creamy and welcoming black fruits that are such a signature of Angélus.
At the same time, the style has unquestionably evolved over the past few decades. Stéphanie’s father, Hubert de Boüard, dates the beginning of these style changes to 1980, when his professor at the oenology research department of the University of Bordeaux, Emile Peynaud, visited the estate. One of France’s most famous oenologists in the 20th century, Peynaud tasted through a range of his student’s wines, and politely murmured his appreciation. But it was only when de Boüard brought out two older vintages from the cellar, the 1953 and 1955, that he really became animated.
‘Young man, there is real potential for this estate,’ de Boüard remembers Peynaud saying. ‘You have something important to do here.’ And ‘it was a message I have never forgotten’, he says. De Boüard had begun working alongside his father, taking over fully in 1985.
He was one of the key winemakers at the time, alongside the likes of Michel Rolland, Christian Moueix and Michel Delon, to experiment with new ways of achieving full ripeness in the grapes. Techniques included green harvesting (dropping fruit before it becomes ripe, halfway through the season, in order to concentrate the fruit left behind), raising the surface of the leaf canopy to expose the grapes to more sunlight, and increasing the density of plantings to increase competition for water and therefore driving roots deeper.
The first sorting tables were introduced at Angélus in 1986, a full decade before many other estates, and the old drainage systems were cleaned up and improved. ‘The biggest impact this had,’ says de Boüard, ‘was on the Cabernet Franc.’ Until this point, both Merlot and Cabernet Franc had been harvested at the same time, but de Boüard found that leaving the Cabernet Franc to reach full ripeness, particularly on the unusual soil where it is planted – with sandy loam topsoil and a dense clay underneath – gave extraordinary power and concentration.
‘This is our signature,’ he says, ‘and it gives the wines the distinction and character that is the expression of a truly great terroir.’
Exploring biodiversity
This is an estate where details count. In the vineyard, although many of the changes introduced in the 1980s are no longer the right ones in the era of a warming climate, the obsessional attention to detail is still a marker of the property.
After years of groundwork increasing biodiversity across the property, Angélus has begun the conversion to organic farming, starting with the 2021 vintage. An agroforestry project has also been ongoing for the past six years, with the planting of oak, beech, plum, apple, pear and about 15 other species of trees among the plots of vines.
In the cellars, the wine is fermented in a range of oak and stainless steel vats for the Merlot, and concrete tanks for the Cabernet Franc. Ageing takes place for up to 22 months in a mix of fine-grained French oak barrels – each with different levels of toasting for the Merlot and the Cabernet Franc, and larger-sized oak casks for the Cabernet Franc, introduced over recent vintages to ensure a softer balance of oak to fruit.
Long-term winemaker Emmanuelle Fulchi, who joined Angélus as a trainee in 1990 before returning full-time in 1996, made her last vintage in 2020, with Benjamin Laforêt taking over as technical director for the 2021 vintage alongside Hubert de Boüard de Laforest. He will be overseeing the continued conversion to organics, and the development of the agroforestry project.