1999 Château Brane-Cantenac

Community Tasting Notes (43) Avg Score: 90.0 points

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  11/19/2023 - Cailles wrote: 90 Points

  20 Vintages of Brane Cantenac: My limited experience with Brane has been mostly positive, and this tasting confirmed my initial thoughts: these days, Brane is A) usually quite accessible and charming, even young; B) the quality has steadily improved over the years, the wines are becoming more complex, precise and balanced; while vintages pre 2015 often seemed a bit simple, more recent vintages show better, C) the aromatics in recent vintages remind me of Ch. Margaux, with beautiful ripe red fruit core, as well as floral and coffee components; and D) the quality/price ratio is exceptionally good (not considered for the ratings). E) The best wine was the ethereal 2020 (96 points), followed by a superbly fresh 2010 (95 points). Although the quality is exceptional these days, the Chateau didn't fully nail every vintage, the 2019 (93pts) and, more surprisingly, the 2016 (93pts) were strong but a tad too ripe and sweet.
  
  TN: Not a particularly strong vintage, this bottle performed quite well. The winery certainly pushed the ripeness as far as they could and gave it quite a bit of oak and this showed: Quite expressive dark fruit core on the nose and palate with some additional layers of cola, burnt sugar and herbs. The tannin structure was a bit harsh and first but with time got softer and softer, but unfortunately some of tannins were green and no amount of air could have changed that. 90/91pts.
  
  Decanting: Not decanted. 30-60 minutes in a decanter should be sufficient.

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  9/10/2023 - J_H Likes this wine: 91 Points

  Vertical of 20 vintages - Chateau Brane-Cantenac: It was a pleasure to taste 20 vintages of Brane-Cantenac. All wines were tasted blind and with little time (10min per flight of 4 wines). Coming from the Margaux appellation, the wine convinced 1) with its accessibility of all vintages, 2) often very feminine and fresh vinification and 3) especially the consistency of quality to be emphasized. So it was not surprising that all 20 bottles (for the first time in this tasting with 12 people) were empty. At the same time, it could also be noted that the very great complexity for ratings above 94 points is often somewhat lacking. Very exciting to observe were the significant change in fruit. Until the 2009 vintage, this was often primarily red-fruited, light and very strongly Cabernet influenced. From the 2009 vintage on, a clear shift to more extraction and sweetness of the fruit is noticeable. The last, often great vintages from 2015 to 2020 are ripe but still with a good freshness/acidity (except for 2015 according to my impression).
  
  Tasting Note:
  - More wood on the nose but rounder with more dark fruit. On the palate nice, richer in dark fruit than the predecessors 1998 and 1995, is nice to drink for me. Clearly better, is a bit richer in fruit but with very nice acidity - fun to drink even if the acidity is probably too high for some. The velvety is thus somewhat missing.
  - 91-92 points

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  9/10/2023 - Sookin1 Likes this wine: 94 Points

  24 year old wine. Kept all its architecture intact. Soft tannins. Nose and mouse intact. A great wine

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  11/26/2022 - The Wine Monkeys wrote: 88 Points

  Nose of tobacco, cedar, cassis. Mouth of tart fruit with some grip to the tannins and a medium finish. Perhaps on the decline. Decent wine but not necessarily memorable.

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  2/12/2022 - Bluespolo wrote: 93 Points

  Margaux da manuale. Fine, elegante, persistente, giocato sui fruttati, ribes ancora croccanti, bacche nere, sentori erbacei, cuoio, sottobosco, menta. Equilibrio, tannini super maturi, struttura quanto basta, ma persistenza da vino dì razza. Più dì quanto ci si attenderebbe da un 99. Nel pieno della maturità, ma non da particolari cenni dì cedimento.

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