TIME TO BUY?
2023 Château Lafleur - yes, Lafleur again, but new 100 point score WK
It exhibits breathtaking purity and harmony.
William Kelley, robertparker.com, April 2026
2023 Château Lafleur
£1,950 per 3 bottle case in bond
Yesterday, William Kelley released a set of updated scores in his review of Bordeaux from the 2023 vintage. Such reviews are important as they are much more telling than barrel tastings – the wines have had time to settle and shows their true colours, hence the definitive scores.
He comments that 2023 Bordeaux was a hybrid vintage ‘uniting at its best the depth and flesh of a sunny vintage with the vibrant, expressive aromas and flavors, evocative of fresh fruits and flowers, more typical of a cooler year.’
In one succinct sentence, he defines what is so appealing about the 2023s. The team at Lafleur tend to categorise their vintages into classic and solar vintages; classic being the cooler, more typical years, and solar being those where ripeness is the dominate character of the wine. In ‘solar’ years the wines will need patience for the terroir signature to assert. 2023 was unusual as it straddled both these categories. That’s what made it so interesting to taste.
It feels like I have written so much on Lafleur over the years, and it is no secret that I remain a huge fan. Some of the finest wines I have ever tasted have been from Château Lafleur, and moreover, I would suggest that irrespective of vintage conditions, Lafleur ranks as one of the most consistently ultra-fine quality producers that I have ever encountered. Year in, year out, the team here are producing one of the finest, most nuanced wines in the world and, if anything, they have elevated standards over the last decade, a time when changes in climate have been presenting Bordeaux with more challenging conditions in which to operate.
Rather than reiterate or paste in comments that I have made previously, I will include not just William Kelley’s glowing review but also the background note that he has written on the property.
The one thing I would add is that Bordeaux 2023 released into a tough market in the late spring/ summer of 2024. The well-documented market slump was already well underway. The 2023 Lafleur, of which only approximately 1000 cases are made, was released at £1,810 per 3 bottle case in bond to notable critical acclaim. In any other market context, you could be forgiven for thinking that stocks would soon disappear from the market as savvy collectors looked to swoop on a well-priced gem from a widely misinterpreted vintage. You could also be forgiven for thinking a 100 point endorsement would see prices start to move at a pace as speculation builds around whether the 2023 joins some of the greats produced by this outstanding Pomerol estate. Neither of these scenarios has transpired. You effectively have the chance to buy the 2023 now that it has been bottled, at just above its initial release price with the benefit of two years hindsight. That is the opportunity that this market currently presents.
2023 Château Lafleur
£1,950 per 3 bottle case in bond
100 points, William Kelley, robertparker.com, April 2026
The 2023 Lafleur is just as compelling in bottle as it was in cask. Deep, complex and resonant, it unwinds in the glass to reveal notes of cherries, raspberry liqueur, iris, violets and mint. Full-bodied, supple and velvety, with a suave attack that segues into an enveloping, vibrant, mouth-filling mid-palate, it exhibits breathtaking purity and harmony. Drink 2030-2063
The Background
This 4.5-hectare estate belongs among the world's élite wineries. Lafleur is a rare example of what happens when seriousness and attention to detail, informed by a deep engagement with Bordeaux's past and present, meets a superb terroir, planted almost entirely with old massal selections of Cabernet Franc and Merlot, which has never seen pesticides or herbicides. The result, somewhat predictably, is one of Bordeaux's very greatest wines but also, given its Cabernet preponderance and soils richer in gravel than in clay, one of its most distinctive.
Of course, Lafleur is what it is today as much by accident as by design, for its former proprietors, the Robin sisters, simply didn't change anything between the death of their father in 1947 and 1985, when Jacques Guinaudeau took the reins. After the famous 1956 frosts, when much of Bordeaux was replanted (often at lower densities and with inferior vine genetics, emphasizing Merlot at the expense of less productive varieties), the Robins did nothing; they only adopted tractors when oxen became unobtainable. By 1985, some 30% of the vineyard's vines were dead, and those that remained were contorted by maladroit pruning. The upside to this more or less benevolent neglect was (besides wines of extraordinary concentration and intensity) an unspoiled genetic patrimony and living soils. What was missing was consistency.
Jacques Guinaudeau changed that. He replanted missing vines with clones but found that they didn't taste like Lafleur, so he embarked upon a massal selection program to preserve Lafleur's unique vine genetics. And determined to no longer submit to the ups and downs of good and bad vintages, he introduced (in 1987) what was initially a second wine, Les Pensées de Lafleur, a cuvée that became, by 1999, a wine in its own right. Ever since, Lafleur derives from the two gravel "banks" that are diagonally bisected by an old watercourse, which is the source of Les Pensées. The soils in this old watercourse are richer in clay and more humid (a permanent cover crop distinguishes these rows from the rest of Lafleur), and they deliver a wine that's much more typical of Pomerol than Lafleur itself, a wine that transcends appellations.
Please let us know of you interest.
Simon
simon.larkin@atlasfinewines.com