2021 Beaulieu Vineyard 'Georges De Latour Private Reserve' Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley
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.
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.
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.
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.