Château Berliquet, 2025
Château Berliquet, 2025
- 75cl
- 14%
- Red Still
- Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon
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Est. delivery in 2028.
Château Berliquet sits prettily on Saint-Émilion's limestone plateau, where the Debourdieu family has been quietly crafting some of the appellation's most refined wines since taking over in 2008. This is Merlot-driven Bordeaux at its most graceful — think silky rather than blockbuster, with the kind of mineral backbone that only limestone terroir can provide.
What the critics say:
Berliquet's vineyards occupy prime real estate on Saint-Émilion's limestone plateau, where the thin topsoil sits directly over the famous calcaire à astéries bedrock. This limestone foundation provides excellent drainage whilst forcing vines to dig deep, creating the mineral tension that defines plateau wines. The elevation and limestone combine to produce wines with more structure and longevity than the softer, sandier soils found elsewhere in the appellation.
Saint-Émilion Grand Cru represents the top tier of this Right Bank appellation, with stricter yield limits and longer ageing requirements than basic Saint-Émilion. The appellation's classification system, revised every decade, recognises estates like Berliquet as Grand Cru Classé based on both terroir and track record. Unlike the Médoc's château-focused classifications, Saint-Émilion emphasises the marriage of site and stewardship, making it arguably Bordeaux's most dynamic classification system.
The 2025 Bordeaux vintage emerged from one of the most demanding growing seasons in recent memory — the earliest budbreak since 1989, June temperatures second only to 2003 since records began, and an unusually early harvest beginning in August for the whites. Conditions that should have produced heavy, overripe wines. They didn't. Decanter's Georgie Hindle, who tasted close to 200 wines ahead of the formal campaign, describes "exceptional concentration, aromatic purity and a freshness that contradicts the record-breaking heat.
The early critical consensus places 2025 stylistically between the precision of 2020 and the structure of 2016, with the brightness of 2023 — a combination that suggests a very serious vintage indeed. Yields are dramatically low, the smallest crop since 1991, with production across the Gironde running around 15% below the five-year average. The quality is here. There simply isn't very much of it.
