Les Pensées de Lafleur 2012

The second wine, the 2012 Les Pensees de Lafleur (about one-half the entire production), is a blend of 54% Merlot and 46% Cabernet Franc. It is a mid-weight, delicate wine displaying hints of sweet cherries, plums, licorice, wet gravel and earth. This supple, medium-bodied, pleasant offering should easily drink well for 10-15+ years.

Baptiste Guinaudeau, the young, tall proprietor of this tiny treasure on the Plateau of Pomerol, harvested his Merlot at a perfect moment, September 23, and finished with the Cabernet Franc on October 6, several days before a huge deluge inundated Bordeaux. He spoke of 46 straight days with no rain, which created hydric stress in parts of their vineyard. The final blend for the 2012 Lafleur was 54% Cabernet Franc and 46% Merlot. Yields were low, never having surpassed 40 hectoliters per hectare in over 30 years, even in abundant years such as 1990 and 1982.

The second wine from la famille Guinaudeau is a blend of 54% Merlot picked on 4th October, ten days after the Merlot for the Grand Vin, and 46% Cabernet Franc picked on 10th October. "We made an individual selection of the Merlot and were very strict. We made one tank less of Merlot and one tank more with Cabernet Franc and this additional tank blended into Pensées," Baptiste explained. Like the Act 4, the Merlot is very expressive here and defined this nascent nose: dark cherries, raspberry, sea foam and a touch of oyster shell. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannins and a fine core of red berry fruit. This is a more "serious" Pensées de Lafleur with great poise and minerality towards the finish. There is not quite the depth of a Pensées from say 2009 or 2010, but it is far more complex than you would imagine thanks to the Cabernet Franc. Tasted April 2013.