Bordeaux 2023 at Two Years: Margaux
It is quite remarkable how quickly change can be effected when you put the right person in charge, giving them the authority and the tools they require.
This is what we see now at Château Lascombes. In recent years this estate has been the subject of a resuscitation, and has over the last two decades turned out wines of a much better quality than those that were made here during the 1980s and 1990s. That much was evident at the Château Lascombes vertical tasting I attended a few years ago, back in 2022. From a selection of vintages ranging from 2011 back as far as 1928, two of the weakest were undoubtedly 1996 and 1989, two benevolent left-bank vintages which should have fostered two very fine wines.
On the night, however, they were outclassed by the likes of the 1975, not to mention 2001, 2005 and 2011.
Having said that, for the past two decades Lascombes has demonstrated stylistic traits which have not appealed to all, and they perhaps brought some Bordeaux drinkers out in hives. Darkly concentrated, and smothered in high-toast, chocolate-infused new oak from the outset (even at the primeurs the predominant aroma was one of smouldering and smoky toasted oak), the wines were clearly subjected to a lavish make-over in the cellars, but in the process they arguably lost some of the finesse, precision, deftness and authenticity that marked them out as Margaux.
But then, enter stage left, Axel Heinz.
Lascombes was sold in 2022, and the new owners installed Axel – poached from a senior position at Ornellaia and Masseto in Tuscany – a few months after receiving the deeds. To say things have changed at Lascombes under the direction of Axel Heinz might be an understatement. This is like an estate reborn, and although I have met Axel once or twice before, I was keen to visit during my 2023 Bordeaux tastings in order to check in on his first vintage now it is in bottle.
