Lafleur 2015

Lafleur 2015 is a blend of 51% Merlot and 49% Cabernet Franc and has a medium to deep garnet color. It shoots from the glass with opulent scents of baked blackberries, warm plums, and tar with nuances of violets, licorice, dark chocolate, and crushed rocks. Medium to full-bodied, the palate is built like a brick house, featuring firm, grainy tannins and seamless freshness, finishing on a lingering fragrant earth note.

The 2015 Lafleur has a broody but intense bouquet with exquisite definition and top quality Cabernet Franc showing through. This just has to be Lafleur! The palate is extremely well balanced with gentle grip, almost powdery in texture and demonstrating enormous depth and persistence on the finish. It is nowhere near ready but it will be a wonderful Pomerol. There is a sense of audacity here that is compelling. Tasted blind at the Southwold 2015 Bordeaux tasting.

Very deep and dark fruits on the nose with black mushrooms and wet earth and just a hint of stones. Touch of rust. Full-bodied, tight and focused. Lots of tannins yet this is so polished under the surface of the wine. Draws you in and holds you with its unique personality. Some tile and clay character to it. Makes you think. Try in 2025.

Tasted by Jane Anson(at Château Gazin, 01 Dec 2017)
Part of Bordeaux Right Bank 2015 in bottle: Top scorers

The difference between Les Pensées and Lafleur itself is almost invariably in the intensity, texture and weight in the mouth. The extraction time for Lafleur is no more than for its little brother, and both have just 20% new oak in this vintage, one of the lowest percentages at this quality level across the whole of Bordeaux, I would like to bet. And yet the ripeness and density of the fruit is full of impact, showcasing tannins that are fine but structured, with an explosion of black fruits and fresh mint leaf on the mid-palate, layered with graphite, slate, cigar box, and black pepper spice. It's going to last and last. Drinking window 2023 - 2040.

Tasted blind. Juicy and opulent but not too sweet. So reverberant! It’s all on the finish, which is a tad drying but it’s a good wine.
Drink 2025-2040

One of Bordeaux's biggest name "cult wine". Tiny production levels and a long pedigree of great quality ensure that collectors fight for an allocation every year despite the high prices. Deep ruby colour with a nose of milk chocolate, dried violets, black plum, and black cherry. Complex and layered with a cool sweetness. The palate is very silky and refined with ripe, cocoa powder tannins and blueberry fruit. Refined and mineral despite the intensity of ripe fruit. The initially lightly layered fruit builds to incredible intensity and complexity on the finish in a real peacocks tail of spicy, sweet and floral characters. Supple, long, superb.

The nose has a mix of black fruits fragrant woodland violets the palate is sweet with ripe black plum velvety and smooth the richness tempered by underlying bilberry freshness. Power and richness at the back supple and ripe yet the back palate is lighter bright seamless and elegant. 2026-40

In a year when too many châteaux seemed to be trying too hard to make great wines, this is the real deal, a subtle, complex, finely judged Pomerol from an exceptional terroir, made with Burgundian love of the land. Racy and sweet, balanced, silky and aromatic, with red berry fruit wound around a mineral core. One of my top two wines of the vintage. Drink: 2025-40

The richness and sexiness of the fruit here is extraordinary and it is packed with juiciness and power while maintaining its red theme. The oak is also full volume but this has been sucked up by the fruit with ease. Very tense and youthful this is a wine which needs a decade minimum to relax and with the calibre of tannins and punch of acidity this is possibly a fifty-year wine.