Chateau Lafon-Rochet 2019
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Dunnuck
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Suckling
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Wine - Decanter
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Robert
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Blend: 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc
The Barrel Sample for this wine is above 14% ABV.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Brilliant stuff, the 2019 Château Lafon-Rochet shows the best of the vintage with its pure, precise, elegant, yet at the same time concentrated style. Showing lots of ripe currant, plum, tobacco, Asian spice, and cedar pencil aromatics, it's medium to full-bodied, has nicely integrated acidity, and just seamless tannins. It's beautifully done and well worth seeking out. It's going to evolve for 20-25+ years. Bestafter 2022.
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James Suckling
The purity of fruit and balance in this young St.-Estephe is really beautiful with crushed-currant, stone and orange-peel aromas and flavors. It’s medium-to full-bodied with fine tannins and a pretty finish. We will see if this is better than the 2018 or not.
Barrel Sample: 93-94 -
Wine Spectator
Ripe and sleek, delivering cassis, damson plum, loganberry and mulberry notes that glisten, with iron, anise, black tea and savory accents. Offers lovely precision and poise, even as the fruit flirts with an exotic blend. Mouthwatering finish. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc. Best from 2023.
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Decanter
Spiced pepper and cinnamon on the first nose, good concentration, pencil lead and slate abound in this alongside cassis bud and touches of brambled hedgerow, all of which suggests fresh acidities and good backbone. Some chewy tannins also, this is a serious Lafon that will age well. Less immediately seductive than the 2018. Tasted twice two weeks apart.
Barrel Sample: 93 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Lafon-Rochet has turned out nicely in bottle, mingling aromas of blackberries and red fruits with hints of violets and pencil shavings. Medium to full-bodied, deep and seamless, with lively acids and ripe, powdery tannins, it's a bright, precise wine, with plenty of depth and structure to support sustained bottle age, but with enough modern polish to temper any suggestion of structural asperity. Best After 2025
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2022- Vinous
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The chateau is in a choice location, in one of the most prestigious winegrowing areas in the world – between Cos d'Estoumel and Lafite-Rothschild (to the south). It is thus hardly surprising that Guy Tesseron, famous for the quality of his old Cognac, was attracted to Lafon-Rochet some 40 years ago.
After acquiring the estate, he decided that the existing cellar was unworthy of such a fine wine, and had it razed. He built an entirely new one and, in a highly unusual move, built a new chateau as well, in the style of the 17th century chartreuse manor house. Thanks to the great care and attention lavished on Lafon-Rochet, it has become one of the standard bearers of the great wines of Saint-Estèphe in France and around the world.
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
Deeply colored, concentrated, and distinctive, St. Estephe is the go-to for great, age-worthy and reliable Bordeaux reds. Separated from Pauillac merely by a stream, St. Estephe is the farthest northwest of the highest classed villages of the Haut Medoc and is therefore subject to the most intense maritime influence of the Atlantic.
St. Estephe soils are rich in gravel like all of the best sites of the Haut Medoc but here the formation of gravel over clay creates a cooler atmosphere for its vines compared to those in the villages farther downstream. This results in delayed ripening and wines with higher acidity compared to the other villages.
While they can seem a bit austere when young, St. Estephe reds prove to live very long in the cellar. Traitionally dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon, many producers now add a significant proportion of Merlot to the blend, which will soften any sharp edges of the more tannic, Cabernet.
The St. Estephe village contains two second growths, Chateau Montrose and Cos d’Estournel.