Château La Lagune, 2016 Update
I sauntered into the cuverie at Château La Lagune and found it thronging with eager tasters. Well, to be fair, perhaps ‘thronging’ isn’t quite the right word. For several years now Château La Lagune has graciously hosted the Union des Grands Crus Sauternes tasting during the primeurs week. Although there are always plenty of visitors to the region eager to taste the sweet wines, this tasting never feels quite as busy as those which feature the famous red wine communes, such as Pauillac or St Julien.
The tasting is really aimed at the trade visitors rather than the press, but I always stop off here in order to fill in any gaps in my tasting notes, and to retaste any where I have doubts or queries. Trade tastings are much less formal and thus more flexible than the press tastings (especially so, now that the press tasting are hosted at the Stade de Bordeaux) and so it is easy to quickly dip in and out in this manner. Even though the focus of my visit here was the 2015 Sauternes, I think it would have been remiss of me not to also taste the 2015 from Château La Lagune, and so once I had finished with the sweeter wines I tracked down proprietor Caroline Frey (pictured) and her wine. Not for the first time, I also grabbed the opportunity to taste from a few other bottles she had opened.
The Wines
The 2015 barrel sample I already described in my 2015 Haut-Médoc report, and so I report here purely on those other vintages, starting with the 2013. As is the norm for this vintage, this is a wine of light body and vivacious acidity. It is already, at this very early stage, close to being ready to drink, the structure almost completely resolved, a characteristic which surely reflects a sensitive scaling back on extraction. For the vintage it is a success, because at least I could imagine myself having a glass, with lunch. Looking at it against the broader context of Bordeaux as a whole, and other vintages, it is another data point that indicates how difficult this year was.
