Branaire-Ducru has long been the connoisseur's Saint-Julien - Fourth Growth pricing, classical winemaking, no flash. The 1996 vintage is now thirty years old and squarely in mature territory, made in one of those classic cool-vintage years where ripe Cabernet held onto bracing Left Bank acidity. The result is everything you'd want from a fully resolved Médoc: cedar, tobacco, dried red and black fruit, leather, and that beam of acidity keeping it lively. Drink it now, with care for the sediment.