Looking at the flagship 2020 Château Lafleur, it’s based on 54% Merlot and 46% Bouchets (Cabernet Franc) that spent 15 months in just 25% new French oak. This brilliant Pomerol reveals a saturated ruby/purple hue as well as a dense, primordial bouquet of red and black fruits, tobacco leaf, iodine, flowers, and crushed stone-like minerality. A powerful, full-bodied, concentrated Lafleur built for the long haul, it has beautiful overall balance, lots of ripe tannins, and the vintage's focused, pure, structured style front and center. It needs to be forgotten for a solid decade and will evolve for 40 years or more.

The 2020 Lafleur is raised in 30% new oak, the rest, for the first time, used at Grand Village for 8 months to reduce the oak influence and season the barrel. (In fact, Jacques Guinaudeau did this in the past). It was bottled in April 2022 after two months settling in large stainless-steel. It has a showstopping nose with stunning delineation and terroir expression. There is a strong mineralité that floods through on the nose, something almost…igneous about the aromas, struck flint and that basalt element that I observed out of barrel. It's a very striking, uncompromising bouquet that expands with aeration. The palate is medium-bodied with fine yet sturdy tannins, intense black fruit intermixed with dark chocolate that ebbs with aeration, revealing more floral aromas after 20 minutes. There is a sense of symmetry on the finish and an extraordinary long aftertaste, while all the time, retaining freshness and vitality. Just wonderful.

One of the wines of the vintage, but likely to prove slower evolving and more introverted than its 2019 counterpart, the 2020 Lafleur unwinds in the glass with aromas of cherries, raspberries, kirsch, black truffle, orange zest and vine smoke. Full-bodied, layered and multidimensional, it's deep and concentrated, with a tightly wound core of fruit framed by rich, powdery tannins, concluding with a long, saline finish. This is another magical bottle from an estate that just seems to do everything right.