2016 Le Petit Caillou de Ducru-Beaucaillou Saint-Julien 750 ml

Château Ducru-Beaucaillou boasts some of the most precious terroir in all of St.-Julien: Located less than a kilometer from Bordeaux’s climate-moderating Gironde estuary, the estate heavy with beaux cailloux (“beautiful pebbles”) “can challenge Léoville Las Cases and the Médoc First Growths in quality each year.” Those are the words of no less an authority than Robert M. Parker, Jr. 

Ducru’s Grand Vin costs well over $200 per bottle—closer to $300, if you want one from the phenomenal 2016 vintage, one of the greatest vintages St.-Julien has ever seen. In years like that, we’ve learned, it ALWAYS pays to beat the bushes for the greatest producers’ lesser-known bottles. That search has led us to the perfectly cellared 2016 Petit Caillou.

A phenomenal wine from Ducru-Beaucaillou, we claimed every bottle we could from the 97-point 2016 season. Perfectly aged at the château, this bottle shows how Ducru-Beaucaillou’s glorious terroir, combined with an all-time-great vintage, can spawn gorgeous wines at all price points. 

A still-youthful deep-purple color shines from the glass as Le Petit Caillou shows rich aromas of black cherry and plum, accented by cedar, wild herbs, and cocoa powder. The palate is ripe and chewy, with grainy, slightly gritty tannins supporting the medium-bodied structure. After five years in the cellar, it’s open-knit and approachable, awash with juicy black fruit, balanced by fresh acidity and nuanced hints of violets, licorice, and cedar. 

A spectacular taste of this unique terroir and the vintage that produced a 100-point $274 flagship, we’ve got the last bottles of Petit Caillou for just $35. 

“Selection, selection, selection” was the answer when Robert Parker, back in the 1980s, asked the cellar master about Ducru’s secret to consistency. He had no idea how true his words were. Since taking over in 2003, owner Bruno Borie has slashed the amount of fruit that goes into Ducru’s Grand Vin. That means grapes that once made the cut for the $200+ Grand Vin were freed up for their second wine, La Croix Ducru-Beaucaillou, and for Le Petit Caillou.

2016 was one of the last vintages that Ducru-Beaucaillou made Le Petit Caillou, and the growing season was simply superb, with St.-Julien in particular turning out its best wines since 2010. The hot, dry summer was buoyed by abundant water reserves after a particularly wet winter, yielding concentrated wines with tantalizing acidity. The cool nights, and a bout of perfectly timed rain in September, gave vines time to recover from the intense summer’s heat, providing ideal conditions for the maturation of tannins. This long growing season heavily favored late-ripening Cabernet—particularly those vines planted in gravelly terrain like the soil found at Ducru-Beaucaillou. 

Don't miss this incredible value.