Past Becomes Now: Lafite-Rothschild 1874-1982 

BY NEAL MARTIN | APRIL 17, 2024

For those who enjoy my voluble prose, apologies, but I am keeping this account of last September’s retrospective of Lafite-Rothschild relatively brief. That has nothing to do with the grandeur of the subject in question, nor should you infer that it is a measure of my appreciation for this First Growth. It is simply because I composed a lengthy piece six years ago on numerous vintages back to 1868, the year when the Rothschild family picked up the front door keys to the château. Now, this vertical doesn’t travel so far back in time, though it only falls six vintages short.

The same group of wine lovers undertook parallel Latour and Lafite-Rothschild verticals on my previous visit to Hong Kong in 2018. On that occasion, Latour made a much greater impression, and I recall some attendees unconvinced by the reverence afforded towards Lafite-Rothschild. I empathized with their opinion, even if it was not one I shared. To quote the indefatigable David Peppercorn in his Bordeaux tome, apropos Lafite, he writes: “Its successful and great years were not so frequent until after 1975 as were those of Latour, and its lesser years tended to be exquisitely pretty but decidedly small wines.” Added to this, some vintages, even great ones like the 1953, were bottled over a period of months, hence greater bottle variation vis-à-vis its peers. Given this backdrop, the group’s expectations leading into this dinner were modest. A friend leaned over just before the first was poured and confessed that Lafite-Rothschild was not his bag. He was here out of curiosity more than anything. After the tasting concluded, I asked whether his opinion had been altered.

He smiled and said: “Now I get it.”

You could argue that forming an opinion on a château based on century-old bottles is absurd, like buying a house based on a Victorian survey report. How can these wines be germane to the present day? I would argue that Lafite-Rothschild has remained stylistically consistent throughout its history, a paragon of finesse and understatement whatever the season’s vagaries. It never shouts or stomps its feet, demanding attention. It abhors ostentation. Lafite-Rothschild is never going to blitz your olfactory senses. Instead, it politely asks you to let it open, like a daisy on the first warm spring morning, which might explain why some more impatient Bordeaux lovers overlook its delights as being too hasty to cast judgment. Perhaps it’s out of sync in a world enamored by glitz, a world where wines are predesigned to seduce as soon as their umbilical is cut. Its deceptive lack of structure vis-à-vis Latour and lack of pizzazz vis-à-vis Mouton cause some to doubt its longevity. However, in my experience, concentration and power are not prerequisites for wine to transcend time. And Lafite does it with unequaled panache.