Bordeaux 2023 at Two Years: Pauillac
In this report I take a look at the 2023 vintage in the commune of Pauillac, with new tasting notes and opinion on the three first growths, each tasted at the châteaux, as well as the two Pichons, again with visits to the properties in each case. I also visited a number of other significant Pauillac châteaux, including Château Grand-Puy-Lacoste, Château Lynch-Bages, Château Batailley and Château Pédesclaux.
I will deal with the three first growths in the order which I visited them. First up on my tasting schedule was Lafite-Rothschild, which I visited on Monday morning, my first day of tasting. We had some difficulty finding a mutually suitable time, my schedule extremely tight, so I am grateful to the team at Lafite for their flexibility in welcoming me at this moment.
I often find young Lafite enigmatic, and the most difficult to ‘get’ of the three Pauillac first growths. That does not mean I like it any less than the others; I have tasted enough bottles of mature and maturing Lafite-Rothschild to appreciate its greatness with bottle age, but drawing a connecting line between what I taste at the primeurs or after bottling at one end, and what the wine will be like in twenty years time at the other, is a challenge. Young Lafite likes to hide its light under a bushel.
Perhaps not the 2023 Lafite-Rothschild though, which spoke to me more clearly than any other young vintage I can recall. I was immediately and effortlessly seduced by its perfumed violet-scented aromatics, its classical poise on the palate framed by graphite and crushed pebble, and its coherent and very complete stance. This is a very lovely Lafite, much more eager to please than I had expected, and – drawing a connecting line into the future – I anticipate it will be divine two decades from now.
Here’s hoping I am still around to find out!
