2014 La Croix Ducru Beaucaillou

[Racer Chris]

I opened my third bottle of this to have with lunch and dinner today.
On opening the wine shows cassis driven fruit, structured with smooth tannins, healthy acidity, and a hint of oak. It's very well balanced, not overextracted. Also not a lot of complexity showing at this stage, but quite nice anyway. It went well with leftover grilled sockeye salmon and grilled corn on the cob.
When I came back to it in the evening the wine had opened up nicely with the addition of a pleasing herbal character overlaying modest dark fruit and slight cassis bite. The tannins remained smooth, not drying, and barely any oak presence. The overall impression is of a high quality traditional Bordeaux that the AFWE will enjoy. Youthful now and it will only get better with age. An excellent accompaniment to rare filet of rib with sautéed onions and mushroom ravioli in homemade pesto sauce.
I strongly recommend a 2 hour decant instead of PnP. Definitely a solid A (93-94).

[robertgoulet]

2012 is a real cracker too

[Racer Chris]

Hmm, the '11, '12 and '14 are all currently the same price at Total Wine. I'll have to give both '11 and '12 a try.
I bought a few '12 Cantenac Brown at that price and I see it's now over $70.
The 2012s I've had this year were all in a pretty good place already, while only a year ago the wood was still too prominent.
'14s otoh seem to be firing on all cylinders right out of the box.