Bordeaux 2015 Primeurs: Château Lafleur
I always make sure I visit Château Lafleur during my primeurs tastings, and I always ensure I schedule a good amount of time here. Not only so that I can linger over the two Pomerols made here, side-by-side, and so that I can get the gist of the vintage, but so that I also have plenty of time to taste the other wines, which should not be overlooked. Rather like near-neighbour Denis Durantou, alongside their very famous Pomerol there is a small portfolio of offerings from other terroirs here, in this case Fronsac (although the wines, even if eligible for the appellation, tend to be classified and marketed using the more generic Bordeaux appellation). Now is not the time for these other good-value offerings though, I shall write of these wines in another instalment of my Bordeaux 2015 report. Here I will focus solely on Château Lafleur, and the associated cuvée Les Pensées de Lafleur, a selection based on terroir but which also functions (although this is not the case in 2015) as a second wine.
The season at Château Lafleur began with a late budbreak in mid-April, followed by very warm weather in May and June, leading to a rapid and very homogenous flowering. The very dry conditions ran through to the end of July, with absolutely no rainfall during the five weeks that ran from June 15th until July 22nd. The vines were beginning to flag a little (although nobody in Bordeaux on good terroir reported true blocage) when the August rains finally arrived, giving a boost to the vineyard, and a rapid véraison ensued.
“It is a unique season for us”, Omri Ram (pictured), maître de chai at Château Lafleur, told me. “There is a very marked vintage character to all the wines, even the whites. The season translates very clearly through the wines. This is down to three factors. First, we had three months in May, June and July which were hot and quite dry. May was the driest, July was the hottest. So we had a beautiful flowering, very homogenous. The flowering in 2014 was also very good, and this is the first time in two consecutive seasons we have had good flowering since the 2005-2006 pair. The water stress limited the size of the grapes, and in 2015 we had the smallest Cabernet Franc grapes we have ever seen, even smaller than 2010. Having said that, I do feel that the Semillon [Omri is speaking of Château Grand Village rather than Château Lafleur here] and the Merlot started to suffer a little in the warm dry weather. The second factor was the rain in August, which brought about the rebirth of the Merlot, giving it a lovely freshness. The third factor was the end of the season, from mid-August to the end of September. At this time it was still warm, but the nights were getting cooler, and we had a dry wind which may have concentrated the berries further, perhaps by as much as 10%. I think this has brought a really creamy, velvety touch to the wines. The end result is no better than 2005, 2009 or 2010, but it is at the same level”.
