Château La Lagune, 2015 Update
Perhaps it is my tendency to support the underdog, but I can’t help feeling drawn towards the five cru classé châteaux of the Haut-Médoc. Denied a grander appellation such as Pauillac or St Julien, these châteaux must succeed purely on their own achievements, on the quality of their wines. There are no grand coat-tails nearby that they can hang on to. Merchants like to describe certain châteaux in Pauillac as being a “poor man’s Lafite” or such like, but no such analogy exists out here in the wilderness.
Despite this disadvantage, several of the five seem to do very well for themselves. Not saying which do well and which don’t (in my opinion) is perhaps rather coy, but then perhaps most readers already know my preferences and my ‘soft spots’. Certainly, Château La Lagune is in the lead. And so I was delighted when I called in on the estate recently to not only grab the opportunity to chew the cud with Caroline Frey, proprietor here since the Frey acquisition in 2000, but also to revisit three recent vintages.
The Wines
I started with the 2013 Château La Lagune. It will come as news to no-one that the 2013 growing season was a wash-out the likes of which the Bordelais had not endured since the early 1980s. This was reflected in Caroline’s decision not to hurry the assemblage for the 2013 primeurs, and so when I visited last year instead of a proposed ‘final’ blend I tasted four curious Cabernet-dominant component-blends, all generally 95-99% Cabernet Sauvignon with dollops of Merlot and/or Petit Verdot to round them out. At the time Caroline and her maître de chai Maylis de Laborderie were undecided whether to create a ‘traditional’ La Lagune, which would typically be something like 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot and 10% Petit Verdot, or whether to make a pure Cabernet Sauvignon cuvée, using only the fruit of the best old-vine Cabernets. She was also not sure, especially if she went for the latter, low-volume approach, whether the wines would be actively commercialised.
