Chateau Lafleur 2025

Lisa Perrotti-Brown: Deep garnet-purple in color, the 2025 Lafleur is closed to begin, needing a lot of patient swirling to unlock scents of ripe plums and juicy blackberries, opening out to reveal a fragrant undercurrent of violets, licorice, mint tea, and underbrush with a hint of mossy tree bark. The medium-bodied palate is the archetypal iron fist in a velvet glove-at once powerful and taut with its stacked black fruit, floral, and mineral layers and very firm tannins, yet velvety-textured with incredible tension, finishing very long, perfumed, and graceful with a persistent hum of minerals. Edifying. The blend is 49% Merlot and 51% Bouchet (Cabernet Franc). The alcohol is 13.5%."

James Suckling: A cool and perfectly integrated wine with a vivid and poised nature, superb focus and precision. It’s so perfumed and dense yet weightless and polished. Endless finish. 51% cabernet franc and 49% merlot."

Jeb Dunnuck: A powerful, inward, yet incredibly discrete and classy wine, the 2025 Château Lafleur reveals black raspberries, framboise, graphite, crushed stone, and floral notes on the nose. Based on 49% Merlot and 51% Bouchet, it's full-bodied on the palate, with a deep, rich, layered mouthfeel, remarkable length, and tons of polished tannins. It's an absolute dream of a wine, and I have no doubt this will check in with the top handful of wines in the vintage."

Jane Anson: High perfume, iris, peony, fragrant and finessed, a slow slow slow unroll of slate and crayon, saffron, grilled cumin, oyster shell, cassis pastille. Such a fabulous wine that has intense interest around it this year, after leaving the Pomerol AOC, and yet manages to shrug it off and simply concentrate on doing what it does best. 33% new oak. Harvest August 26 to September 12"

Vinum: Leicht reduktiv, tiefgründig, mit markanter Mineralität, rauchigen Noten, Veilchenblüten, Vanille, Koriander im Duft; gradlinig im Auftakt, sehr fokussiert, baut enorm viel Druck auf, ohne dass ein Element überbordet, feine Gerbstoffe, in Massen vorhanden, leicht cremig in der Textur, der Wein zeigt grosse Eleganz und eine fast endlose Länge, endet auf Kirschen, Weihnachtsgewürze."

Falstaff: Dunkles Rubingranat, violette Reflexe, dezente Randaufhellung. Floraler Touch, schwarze Waldbeeren, feine Kräuterwürze, dunkle Kirschen, ein Hauch von Preiselbeeren, Mandarinenzesten unterlegt. Komplex, kraftvoll, feiner Nougattouch, schwarze Beerenfrucht, reife, runde und sehr geschliffene Tannine, dezente Extraktsüße im Abgang, feine Mineralität, lange anhaftend, salziger Nachhall, noch sehr jugendlich, zeigt große Länge und sicheres Reifepotenzial."

The Wine Cellar Insider: Truffles, flowers, cocoa, black cherries, smoke, and chocolate mint begin to define the nose. The wine coats your palate, covering your mouth, teeth, and gums with layers of pure, sweet, energetic fruit, marine influences, dark cocoa, and a touch of herbs. Long, intense, rich, and polished, this is one of the more sensuous offerings from Lafleur. It is a wine that can age for decades, yet if you prefer your Lafleur on the fruity side, it will be charming to enjoy in its youth. Some of the main keys to the vintage were managing the flowering and working with the tiny berries, which averaged 160 per bunch, with thick skins yielding small amounts of juice, ranging from 1 gram to .7 grams per berry, which provided concentration and flavor. The wine blends 51% Cabernet Franc, and 49% Merlot. 14% ABV. 3.75 pH. Harvesting took place for the Merlot September 20-21, and for the Cabernet Franc, September 30. Yields were 35 hectoliters per hectare. Drink from 2030-2075."

Wine Advocate: The 2025 Lafleur is generous and expressive, bursting with aromas of sweet cherries and raspberries mingled with notions of licorice, anise and violets. Full-bodied, dense and muscular, with a fleshy attack that segues into an ample, layered core of primary fruit, it's built around plenty of sweet, powdery tannin. This is a large-scaled Lafleur endowed with everything in abundance."

Decanter: A quietly compelling wine from Lafleur this year. Creamy blue fruit aromas on the nose, quite open and friendly with some purple floral aspects and ripe but cool fruit, milk chocolate and some dried herbs. Soft and bouncy with both immediate grip and energy and intensity. Round and filling but delicately so - nothing overdone, there’s flesh and tannin presence but a certain lifted aspect where nothing is heavy. Lots of layers, fully textured but lattice-like. Still quite a dark style despite a juicy core with liquorice, flint, smoke, cedar and clove all in harmony. Really very cool and fresh, nothing hot or sunny about this wine. Serious, knitted, dark and finely tuned with good construction and grip while giving the impression that it’s not too muscular. Bravo. A yield of 35hl/ha. Now designated as a Vin de France as are all the other wines in the Lafleur range."