2018 Les Pensées de Lafleur
France
Pomerol
Bordeaux
Red
57% Merlot, 43% Bouchet (Cabernet Franc) (2024 vintage)
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2018
2024 - 2038
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2024
2029 - 2039
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2023
2028 - 2043
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This is a fine set of 2023s from the Guinaudeau. As always, the team, led by Baptiste Guinaudeau, Omri Ram and Ralitsa Todorieva, offers especially thoughtful, introspective views of a year that, in the end, was shaped by two heat episodes at the end of the growing season. I found the two Grand Village wines, Les Perrières and Champs Libres, quite expressive and deep. The two wines from the Lafleur property were less giving. Perhaps the ups and downs of the growing season need more time to harmonize in these young wines, or maybe I caught them at an awkward moment, which can certainly happen with en primeur samples. We shall see when everything is in bottle. Readers will want to take a close look at the wines, as they are quite distinctive in 2023.
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2023
2027 - 2042
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2022
2027 - 2042
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2022
2030 - 2047
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2022
2030 - 2050
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2021
2025 - 2041
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2021
2028 - 2048
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2021
2025 - 2041
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I was quite taken with the wines I tasted at Lafleur this year. As always, Baptiste Guinaudeau and Omri Ram had some pretty strong views to share. "It was a year with many seasons, but you just had to know what to do," Guinaudeau said. "We have gotten better at frost protection, especially in understanding how to deal with black versus white frost, which are quite different in terms of how the layers of air are arranged and what approaches work well in each case. People say the Merlots are diluted, but we had the same berry size as in 2015," he added. As for the wines, this range offers something for everyone. The Grand Villages bottlings deliver superb quality for the money, while the Champs Libres continues to gain in distinction. The two wines from the Lafleur property itself are once again stellar, but this year I was especially taken by the Perrières, which is tremendous.
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2021
2028 - 2048
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“It is a complex vintage to understand,” Baptiste Guinaudeau told me in typically ebullient form. “Numbers are useless. It’s much better to analyse the vineyard work and to taste the berries. There was a lot of work in the vineyard. There were challenges, but we are small, less than 20 hectares [including Grand Village and Les Grands Libres], so we could balance our workload. It is not a vintage of ideas, but one of right timing. The 2021 continues this new concept of multi/hybrid vintages. Our job is to help the vintage be more regular. We love this kind of season. Here, we have more people than hectares. What was surprising is how vines could navigate the growing season without extremities. Our Merlot is on gravel so [unlike at Petrus] we did not suffer coulure and the berries were normal size, just a bit bigger than 2018. The weight of the berry was very important for how you vinify. At Lafleur it was 1.30 to 1.35 grams. The vines stopped growing in July, found some water stress in August, then we had a warm and beautiful September. So, there is a normal tannic structure. We picked from 7 September to 7 October.”
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2020
2028 - 2058
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2020
2025 - 2045
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2020
2025 - 2042
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“There is so much to say,” said Omri Ram, who often has much to say at Château Lafleur, accompanied by Baptiste Guinaudeau. “It was a great vintage for Domaine Lafleur as we never had quality across the range of our six wines. The vintage is definitely a weirdo, unique in many ways, though we now have some experience with this new type of vintage. Until 2015, what you might call the “recent classical era” there was a maritime climate and once in a while, there would be a solar season, or an extreme vintage with heatwaves, or extremely cool weather like 2013. Then from 2016 we have had a new type of solar vintage in odd years like 2017 and 2019 that are not necessarily easy, but have no surprises during the season. Then we have even vintages like 2016, 2018 and 2020 that are two or three different seasons [contained] in one wine. They are more complex. They are seasons that you have to navigate and where you cannot deviate.
“We had no winter as there are above average temperatures, 2-3°C above normal, which has a strong impact,” Guinaudeau continued. “There was an early start to the growth cycle with some exposure to frost, so we protected Lafleur and Grand Village with smudge pots and wind turbines. Then, there was three times the rainfall between mid-May to mid-June and we had to avoid mildew. We had never seen so much rain - we had to spray at night. You have to use those windows of dryness, using small caterpillars in the vineyard, since the ground was so saturated. We didn’t lose anything in the end to mildew. The flip [in the weather] in 2016 took four weeks, whereas in 2020 it took just a couple of weeks. The vines were lazy. They were not in shape like in 2019, so we started monitoring the water stress, getting the vines into shape by pruning the canopy, cutting shoots so that the vines transpire less, also continuing to work the soil. We navigated the heatwave thanks to 25-30mm of rain before the harvest. At harvest, the conditions were great and we could harvest exactly when we want, not panicking if we had to wait, picking at the end of a cool cycle, observing temperatures. We picked early in the morning, maintaining a rule of no longer than 30 minutes between vine and vat, so we don’t need cooling units. We started the white on 25 August and the reds on 4 September, finishing the Merlot around 18 September, Bouchet [Cabernet Franc] at the end of September. The berries were small, but not as small as 2010 and 2018. They were back to normal size.”
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2019
2026 - 2050
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2019
2025 - 2039
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2019
2026 - 2042
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2018
2024 - 2038
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2018
2023 - 2045
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2018
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As always, Baptiste Guinaudeau had an especially nuanced take on the vintage. “Everyone talks about the extremes in 2018 – the spring rains and summer heat,” he said. “For us, the most important thing about climate change is not the summer, but that we are experiencing very warm winters. For example, February was 3.3°C hotter than normal, while July was just 1°C warmer than normal. Warmer soils mean that the growing season starts earlier, and that sets the stage for the rest of the year. Once upon a time spring rain was the difference between a poor vintage and a very good one, but after 2016, we know that spring rains are not a big influencing factor, and this is because the soils are warmer than they used to be. We are now getting used to vintages with wide swings in weather conditions.”
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2017
2022 - 2037
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2017
2023 - 2050
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2017
2022 - 2038
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The Batman and Robin of Lafleur, Baptiste Guinaudeau and Omri Ram, were on hand to guide me through the latest releases from the Guinaudeau family that include wines from outside the appellation: Grand Village, their “Acte” series and Les Champs Libres. “There was nothing touched by frost at Lafleur,” Baptiste explains. “We used fans and candles and it was the candles that were most effective. We bought a wind turbine anyway since you can use it just before the harvest to ward against botrytis.” Baptiste Guinaudeau then proposed an idea with regard to the long-term effects of frost. “We discovered that you [the vines] were not either green or black after the frost. There is “grey”. That means you are touched but you don’t see it. There was something weird with those “grey” vines, for example, the flowering might not be perfect or, they grow in a strange way. Physiologically, the vines are not right. So, very early on, we decided not to work with any vines that had been touched by frost and it was clear to us that we could not use the second-generation grapes. We pruned everything until the end of June to ensure that we could work normally in 2018, so that we will have good wood for pruning the following year. We used eight people to do that.” I then asked Guinaudeau about the climatic aspects of the growing season outside of the frost. “Generally, 2017 is an early, warm and dry vintage. On 20 June we had more hydric stress than in 2011 and in July and August we had just 35mm of rain. We harvested the Merlot at the end of the summer cycle, from 8 to 12 September for Lafleur, then there were a few days of changeable weather after which we picked the Cabernet Franc on 28 and 29 September. Looking at three measurements together, the weight per berry, the malic acid (at 1gm/L) and water stress, you can easily classify 2017 as a great vintage.” The 2017 Lafleur and Pensées de Lafleur (Baptiste pains to stress that it is not a second wine but another cuvée) are both impressive wines. Like l’Eglise-Clinet they demand patience at this early stage and oblige more coaxing than their peers. However after 15 minutes the bouquet on the Lafleur blossomed and took your breath away, offering a brief glimpse of what one of the standouts wines of the vintage will become when it reaches its peak.
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2017
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2016
2022 - 2042
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2016
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2016
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2016
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2015
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2015
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2015
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2014
2021 - 2036
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2014
2018 - 2029
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The artisan side of Bordeaux is on display at Lafleur, where the dimensions are much more Burgundy-like than at so many other properties. Baptiste Guinaudeau makes wines of elegance, finesse and distinction. All of those qualities are on display in the sublime wines from Lafleur and sister proprties Grand Village and Acte.
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2014
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Baptiste Guinaudeau is one of Bordeaux's most thoughtful growers, so it is not entirely surprising he has a unique take on 2014. In Guinaudeau's view, a look at 2014 has to start with conditions in June 2013, when cool, rainy weather determined the pre-formation of small clusters for the following year. The heat of June 2014 and then later in September concentrated the fruit in the already small bunches, something that was particularly evident in the Cabernet Francs. As for the wines, well, they are superb.
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2013
2018 - 2026
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2013
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2013
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Baptiste Guinaudeau and his family represent the vigneron side of Bordeaux, a kind of mind-set that is frankly refreshing in a region dominated by glamour and formality. The growing season got off to late start, as it did throughout Bordeaux, but the plants recovered later in the spring, when temperatures swung from about 3 degrees below average to three degrees above average within the span of just a few days between late June and early July. The entire 2013 harvest took place in October, only the third year that has ever happened, the others being 1988 and 2008. The grapes were the smallest since 2010, which explains the richness in these wines within the context of the year. This site was also spared the late July/early August storms that were an issue in nearby appellations. Yields came in at 29-31 hectoliters per hectare, which is to say normal for the estate. Maceration times were shorter than normal, and were carried out at low temperatures. Malos, done exclusively in barrel, were finished by mid-November. Guinaudeau chose to blend early, while the memory of the vintage was still vivid.
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2012
2022 - 2032
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2011
2020 - 2032
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2011
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2011
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2010
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2010
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2010
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2009
2019 - 2030
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2009
2018 - 2028
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2008
2018 - 2030
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2007
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Perhaps the key to transcending the vintage in 2007 was working a very small property that one could farm virtually like one's own back yard, as is the case here. Jacques Guinaudeau carried out substantial green harvesting to reduce the crop level in his 4.5-hectare vineyard, then did multiple treatments against mildew when needed and picked with precision, bringing in merlot on September 16, 21 and 28, and harvesting the cabernet franc on September 29 and 30. "For most of August nothing was happening in the vines," said Guinaudeau. "The acid levels remained high into early September, but of course this also allowed the fruit to retain freshness and when the grapes finally ripened there was no cooked character. Still, the new vintage is less structured and powerful than the wines we made in 2006 and 2005." Guinaudeau told me that his cabernet ripened better than the merlot because it was less advanced at the time of the inclement weather in late August. Incidentally, the 2006 Lafleur appears to be delivering on its early promise. Guinaudeau considers '06 a very good Pomerol year, "like 2001," which is a sleeper vintage for this appellation and produced a number of standout wines.
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2006
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Jacques Guinaudeau has been responsible for the vinification here since 1985 (he began by renting the vines) and was able to complete the purchase of this fabled 4.5-hectare property at the end of 2002. (He is a nephew of the Robin sisters, who managed this property from the end of World War II through 1985.) As he got established here, he cleaned up the chai, kicking out the chickens that had previously run loose in the winery, and introduced temperature control in the cellar. Lafleur is a single parcel covering what Guinaudeau describes as "five soils," the most important of which are clay with gravel and clay with sand, located adjacent to Petrus and La Fleur-Petrus. Due to his relationship with J. P. Moueix, which markets a portion of the wine, Guinaudeau has been advised through the years by enologist Jean-Claude Berrouet, as well as by consultant Christian Veyry. During our tasting on a brilliantly sunny but chilly afternoon, Guinaudeau emphasized that one of the keys to Lafleur is his soft extraction. Guinaudeau believes that, until 2005 at least, 2000 is the best recent vintage for Lafleur because it was outstanding for both merlot and cabernet franc. He feels that the '98, in the view of many the finest Pomerol vintage since 1961, lacks a bit of power and concentration. "The merlot was great in '98 but the cabernet franc was only very good," he explains.
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2005
2019 - 2032
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2005
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Jacques Guinaudeau has been responsible for the vinification here since 1985 (he began by renting the vines) and was able to complete the purchase of this fabled 4.5-hectare property at the end of 2002. (He is a nephew of the Robin sisters, who managed this property from the end of World War II through 1985.) As he got established here, he cleaned up the chai, kicking out the chickens that had previously run loose in the winery, and introduced temperature control in the cellar. Lafleur is a single parcel covering what Guinaudeau describes as "five soils," the most important of which are clay with gravel and clay with sand, located adjacent to Petrus and La Fleur-Petrus. Due to his relationship with J. P. Moueix, which markets a portion of the wine, Guinaudeau has been advised through the years by enologist Jean-Claude Berrouet, as well as by consultant Christian Veyry. During our tasting on a brilliantly sunny but chilly afternoon, Guinaudeau emphasized that one of the keys to Lafleur is his soft extraction. Guinaudeau believes that, until 2005 at least, 2000 is the best recent vintage for Lafleur because it was outstanding for both merlot and cabernet franc. He feels that the '98, in the view of many the finest Pomerol vintage since 1961, lacks a bit of power and concentration. "The merlot was great in '98 but the cabernet franc was only very good," he explains.
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2004
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Christian Moueix picked all of the young merlot vines here on September 11th, before the substantial rainfall of the 12th and 13th, with the result that Lafleur is one of the house's riper, more concentrated and more successful wines in '99. Still, admits Moueix, "we lost some of the sunny side of Lafleur with the parcels we picked after the rain."
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1998
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Christian Moueix picked all of the young merlot vines here on September 11th, before the substantial rainfall of the 12th and 13th, with the result that Lafleur is one of the house's riper, more concentrated and more successful wines in '99. Still, admits Moueix, "we lost some of the sunny side of Lafleur with the parcels we picked after the rain."
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1998
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1997
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1987
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I first heard about The Sportsman not long after it opened from a local friend, and it had only taken a couple of decades to visit. Thankfully, it did not disappoint. This is cooking where the chef wisely takes a back seat and allows the ingredients do all the talking.
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