Château Angelus 1979 review and tasting!

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Wine Archive. My name is Yann Dubaca and we are going to taste a very exciting wine today. It's a 1979 of Chateau L'Angelus from Saint-Emilion. Let's taste. Chateau L'Angelus is obviously very famous in the Saint-Emilion region and makes three different wines. You have Chateau L'Angelus, you have Carillon de L'Angelus and you have number three. In 2012 Chateau L'Angelus was ranked Premier Grand Cru Classé 1 from Saint-Emilion region. The vineyard has 23.4 hectares of vineyard in Saint-Emilion which is a really big property but this is for them very interesting to maintain the quality between the three different wines that they make. The vineyard is split very evenly. It's almost half Merlot and half Cabernet Franc with just a few plus of Cabernet Sauvignon. The 1979 vintage was really tricky. During the year there was a lot of rain but continuing to the summer it was a little bit less and less. This gave the grapes at least some possibility to grow and to ripen. The summer was also not really ideal. It was not really hot, also not really dry so the wine was really reached at a point that it could not develop anymore. But you never know, sometimes you can be very surprised with a winery that can produce great wines throughout these crazy vintages. Now let's taste the wine. Let's check out the color to begin with. So of course 1979 you can expect a really light color which is correct but as you can see maybe on the camera it is also still very red. Of course you have a big border of orange and blue and brown but mainly it's red on the nose. So sometimes with older wines you have the tertiary nose of course and they are really present but this time it's really elegant. So I have some really nice leather, some really elegant tobacco, some dark chocolates, some elegant floral notes. This is probably from the Cabernet Franc and some really well integrated oak on the palate. The wine is safe so I'm very happy about that. Of course it's always a little bit of a gamble to open up an older wine but the wine is clean. You have still a lot of fruitiness left, some nice tertiary notes, it's really clean, nice and elegant, great freshness so the acidity kept up really well. If you go back to what I said about this vintage, this is what I mean. Sometimes you read the notes or you read the description of the vintage and you're almost scared to open up the bottle and then you open it and like wow this is an elegant wine. Sometimes you just need to open it up and check out for yourself. Yeah it's really delicate Merlot, really nice, great balance between the acidity that are still present. Really happy about that, really elegant fruits and there's not really more to say about this wine. It's just really easy drinking. This wine would be perfect with some roasted chicken alongside some vegetables in the oven and that's it. Really happy with this opening. I cannot wish for a better result because of it's 79 so it's really tricky but in general I'm really happy. So if you already had the pleasure to taste a Chateau Angelus, let us know in the comments your experience. We're really interested in your thoughts. Also don't forget to subscribe, we will really appreciate it and we will see each other on the next one. Cheers!