2018 - Lafleur, Pomerol

Lafleur 2018 is deep garnet purple in color. It is a little broody to begin, giving way to notes of sauteed herbs, damp soil, and truffles, over a core of baked plums, blackberry preserves, and cedar, with a waft of olives. Medium to full-bodied, the palate is firm and grainy, quite muscular, locked up tight, with a long and earthy finish. It needs time!

Always a wine that requires time in bottle, and the 2018 is extremely closed down at three years old. Cabernet Franc dominates in expression, with layers of cool blueberry and blackcurrant fruits, needing a good 30 minutes in the glass to begin to open up and let out the raspberry leaf, peony floral notes. Packed in among the fine tannins are fennel, soy, smoked earth and slate, and this is a stunning Lafleur, from those carefully, thoughfully tended 4.5ha of vines. 25% new oak.

The 2018 Lafleur is a great Pomerol, though it would take the bronze medal in a three-way race against the 2019 and 2020. Like many Bordeaux wines from this hot solar vintage, it has a powerful nose with precocious black fruit, black truffle and clove, veins of blueberry emerging with aeration, though it does not offer the aromatic precision of the Lafleurs on either side of it. The palate is noticeably sweet on the entry with more blue fruit notes than the 2019, commingling with tar and graphite from the Cabernet Franc. Grippy and assertive, this is a burly Lafleur at present. Though there is lovely juiciness on the finish, the 2019 and the 2020 unequivocally have more style. Tasted from ex-château magnum at Kate & Kon's 40-Year vertical in Austria.

Tasted blind. Spicy and sweet and exotic. Difficult to spit. Real energy here. Long and with great layers and excitement. Hint of tarriness. (JR)