2018 Château Lafleur

Community Tasting Notes (15) Avg Score: 98.6 points

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  2/7/2024 - fcxj wrote: 92 Points

  Tight!

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  9/30/2023 - watcheslover Likes this wine: 99 Points

  My colleagues and I were finally able to organize a mini Lafleur vertical last night (an old dream that was very, very difficult to bring together) to redefine the odds against the fabulous 2022 vintage. Once again, we can't put 100 points everywhere.
  
  1) 2019 - 2022 (sample) 100/100
  3) 2020 99-100/100
  4) 2018 99/100
  5) 2016 - 2021 (sample) 98-99/100
  7) 2015 98/100
  8) 2012 -2017 97/100
  10) 2014 96-97/100
  11) 2013 94/100

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  6/6/2023 - csimm wrote: 100 Points

  TOP SHELF WINE WEEKEND: Even on the first glass from a pop-n-pour (cuz you have to get after it early on this wine, otherwise it’ll be drained in the blink of an eye amongst this eager group of wine mongers), the 2018 Lafleur showcases top tier purity from the first sip. Primary and linear initially, with blackberry seed and unripe black cherry sprinting past the mid-palate, finishing with a floral-meets-mineral tail, this bottle of Lafleur doesn’t waste much time before settling into a groove that is pretty much like riding the best rollercoaster of all time – but one that is like a polished Japanese bullet train and not some clanky Coney Island coaster with sticky handrails. If you prefer to carve out 10 minutes of your day solely for reading my previous note on this wine in November 2021, you’ll find all the hacked wine wordsmithing you’d ever want. My sentiments haven’t changed much since then.
  
  I clutched on to a glass of this for over an hour waiting for something to happen…and it did. As it gobbles up oxygen like a hippo at a Hardee’s, my beloved Lafleur Cinderellas its way into the polished Pomerol puma that I’ve come to admire. An electric charge of super classy red, purple, and black fruits (think freshly washed mixed berries under a strobe light) mingle with chiseled mineral and forest floor notes (but as if someone had swept the “floor” so clean that all that is left is a whisper of the earth element).
  
  Though it’s easy to forecast even more greatness with this wine (if that’s possible) after perhaps a decade or so more in the bottle, I almost hate to give up ground here early when it’s so remarkable in its current state with a bit of air. Tragically, the bottle was empty before I’m sure it could reach even higher on the awesome-ladder. 98-100 points. For my palate, this is really what I consider one of the classiest and coolest bottles of wine out there.
  
  Next to the 2004 and 2012 Lafleur, the 2018 is…well…it’s kinda just not fair…

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  5/28/2023 - sfwinelover1 Likes this wine: 100 Points

  Best of the World Wine Night (ex-Italy) (The csimm_M Estate): Wow, just wow. When I read friend csimm’s TN for this wine, which I’d not even heard of previously, a bit under 2 years ago, I became intensely curious about it. Not so much so that my wine spend, still relatively new to the land of Colgins and Abreus, was going to jump several ladder rungs to actually purchase it (see bottom of the TN), but such that I fervently but silently hoped that if might show up at a tasting I cadged an invite to via the kindness of others, and all praises to Dionysus, this did today. Seeing this, unexpected as it wasn’t listed on the last version of the carte I checked, I tried, no doubt unsuccessfully, to keep my cool and not appear overeager, even if, getting there close to on time, it was already significantly dented. I think that this was the first thing I tasted, even before the dream ‘01 Harlan, but if it wasn’t, it was damned close, so my palate was as sharp as a knife fresh off the strop.
  
  Well, leaving aside the economics, if you love wine, you breathe wine, you feel wine, this is, simply, a must taste experience. All manner of dark berries and black currants mingle and intertwine with the most splendid and formidable, but never impenetrable, dark notes of graphite, asphalt, lava (yep, Taurasi lovers, you can get lava outside of Campania), along with ground and forest spice and dark florals medium bodied yet profoundly deep, persistent and complex, the true fist in the velvet glove. And yeah, the nose doesn’t suck, either. I don’t know what the prep was for Marvin, whom I didn’t know brought this—I’d assumed it was our host—until just reading IRBDW’s TN, but he got this to an extraordinary place, and while my score reflects that this *could* improve, I have to admit that it’s not readily apparent to me how. The best young BDX I’ve had by far, and the best BDX, full stop, alongside the ‘00 Latour (and the best young wine alongside fellow guest Alex’s ‘19 Cab), and right there with the aforementioned wines, the day’s ‘01 Harlan and very few others atop the all-time favorite list. I’d have loved to have revisited this closer to the end of the tasting, but it was long gone, or tried pairing it, but at this point, these would have seemed more to be for purposes of variation, not improvement. Although I’m a huge fan of bottle aging higher end BDX varietals and blends (if anything, those from the mothership and the Land of the Boot even more than the local hooch), this wine today, when put up against its sib from ‘04, is a powerful buttress to csimm’s argument that youth is sometimes served over age, and by an overwhelming margin at that. This could ball up at some point and become undrinkable until I’m off the planet, but with that happening or steady drinkability, this should easily be thriving a couple of decades out, maybe more. Extraordinary. Easy 99-100+
  
  A word here without getting too mushy, I hope. One of the things that’s moved me deeply in the online to offline CT community the past few years has been the unbridled generosity of many of the participants. I’ve watched my wine spend steadily inch up to the realm of Colgins and Abreus (alas, as I commented to one of the other guests, once you get seriously on the wine ladder, it’s unidirectional [up] unless you die or are overtaken by alcoholism), I see no scenario where it gets to this point, but I’m so taken with the kindness of others whose spend has and willingly and selflessly share it, even among those they know only casually. If I’d brought this, I’d probably have hung around the tasting island asking everyone, “Did you like that? See, I brought it!”, yet I had no sense of this from Marvin. So, thank you, my friend, for bringing one of the wines of my life.

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  5/28/2023 - bsumoba Likes this wine: 98 Points

  Memorial Madness at Case de Chris y Melissa - Day 2 of 2: Needed about an hour of air. Kept getting better in glass. The mid palate was to die for, gliding over my palate like rain on a windshield just treated with rainX. Still a big wine and will need some time to resolve itself. I couldn't get over how weightless on the palate. Long finish. This would have ranked 2nd in the lineup if this were to have been compared to Day 1, behind the 19 Cheval Blanc. 98+++

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