Chateau Angelus has the unique distinction of having occupied every rung of the St-Emilion classification at one point or another in its history. In 2012, the Chateau celebrated its promotion to the very top tier, Premier Grand Cru Classe A, with a black bottle embossed with 21-carat gold-imprinted script. But ten years later, in 2022, it announced that it had decided to keep company with Ausone and Cheval Blanc in abandoning the classification altogether. Was it no longer exclusive enough? The chateaux concerned voiced complaints about the selection criteria.

The De Bouard family have been making here since 1782, though mostly under the name Chateau Mazerat. But they acquired the walled Clos Angelus in 1923, and settled on the name Chateau Angelus after the Second World War. They chose a bell as a symbol, since you can hear the bells from no less than three local churches in the vineyard.

Hubert de Bouard was the sixth generation of his family to make wine here, and his single-minded pursuit of excellence drove quality (and prices) higher and higher during his tenure between 1985 and 2012. He installed drainage, improved pruning and canopy management, introduced green harvesting, reorganised the vineyards both by grape planting density, and improved sorting. He was also a savvy marketer. One of the first things he did was to modify the name from L’Angelus to Angelus, to make it appear at the head of alphabetical lists. He also got Angelus into James Bond films – Bond savoured 1982 Angelus in Casino Royale, and 2005 Angelus in No Time to Die, and in SPECTRE a femme fatale sashayed past a bottle of Angelus. In 2012, Hubert stepped back to allow his daughter Stephanie de Bouard to take over. She has supervised the transition to organic viticulture, as well as a more plot-by-plot approach to vinification. Amphorae have appeared in the cellar.

Overall, plantings are 50% Merlot/47% Cabernet Franc/3% Cabernet Sauvignon. The Merlot is planted on a mix of clay and limestone, while the Cabernet Franc is planted on a gravelly mix of limestone and sand. Hubert de Bouard likes to ascribe a lot of the success of Angelus to the Cabernet Franc. The old French name for Cabernet Franc is Bouchet, which also happens to have been the surname of Hubert’s great grandmother – so occasionally Angelus will release a 100% Cabernet Franc wine called Hommage a Elisabeth Bouchet. (NT 15/08/25)