Château Lafite-Rothschild: 1986-2010 vertical tasting

The wines of Château Lafite-Rothschild are the essence of elegance. Sophisticated classics of left bank Bordeaux, they excel their peers in the subtlety of their bouquet, the graceful evolution of the wines in bottle, and the distinctive stamp of their heritage.

Lafite is not showy or ostentatious. Rather, it is understated in an almost debonair way, yet it lacks nothing of the power or longevity that one would hope for in a top-flight claret.

Lafite is also, however, something of an enigma. It is a wine that excites such enthusiasm among its devotees that the uninitiated wonder if it could ever live up to its billing. According to some of the most knowledgeable palates, it does.

Lafite was long the favoured claret of renowned connoisseur Michael Broadbent MW. Broadbent has many quotable thoughts on Lafite, but among my favourites comes from his book Vintage Wine, apropos of the 1985 vintage: ‘It is a wine that does a sort of slow striptease, revealing more each time one sniffs and sips.’

Broadbent was neither the first nor last to extoll its virtues. The praise was already raised to a high level in the 18th century by the Maréchal de Richelieu, who reportedly told Louis XV in 1755 that ‘I have found Château Lafite’s wine to be a delicious, generous cordial, comparable to the ambrosia of the Gods of Olympus.’

To do justice to such a wine requires reflection, and a vertical tasting provides a perfect occasion, since a well-constructed vertical illuminates a château’s wines as well as the strengths of each vintage.

Scroll down to see tasting notes and scores for 12 Lafite wines between 1986 and 2010

The beginnings

The origin of Château Lafite is difficult to date with certainty. It is likely to have existed in the 13th century, but it was not dedicated to the production of wine until being planted in 1670 by Jacques de Ségur, whose grandson was Nicolas-Alexandre, Marquis de Ségur.

The Marquis was the proprietor at one time of Latour, Mouton, Calon, Pontet-Canet, and Lafite, earning him the nickname ‘Prince de Vignes’ from Louis XV. After the death of the Marquis, his châteaux were distributed among his daughters. Lafite eventually passed to his grandson Nicolas-Marie, who lost his fortune to riotous living, and sold Lafite to pay his debts. It went to a distant cousin, Pierre de Pichard, whose head was separated from his neck during the Revolution, and the estate was sold to Dutch and then to English owners, ending with the Rothschild family in 1868.

The lay of the land today

The family held on through the difficult times of phylloxera, the Great Depression, and two World Wars. After the Second World War, the Rothchilds regained the estate and began to rebuild under Baron Elie de Rothschild and then his nephew Baron Eric de Rothschild, who took over in 1974.

Today, the vineyard is 112ha, planted 70% to Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% to Merlot, and 5% to a combination of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. Most of the vineyards surround the château itself.

There is another section on the Carruades plateau adjoining Mouton. Oddly, there are also 4.5ha across the border in neighbouring St-Estèphe, near the vines of Lafon-Rochet in an area known as Blanquet.

The oldest vines were planted in 1886 in a plot located to the east of the D2 road called La Gravière. The grapes from the oldest vines and the tannic fruit from the St-Estèphe side are normally included in the top wine (the grand vin), which comprises between 30%–40% of the production on average. Nearly half of the production is sold as Carruades de Lafite, and the balance is blended into Lafite’s Légende de Pauillac brand.

Passing the management and winemaking baton

For many years, the managing director of the estate was Christophe Salin, who was assisted by technical director Charles Chevallier. Emile Peynaud was the longtime consulting oenologist, and he was followed by Jacques Boissenot, and then by Boissenot’s son Eric after 2014.

This team began to transition in 2016 with the retirement of Chevallier, who was replaced as technical director by Eric Kohler. Then in 2017, it was announced that Eric’s daughter Saskia de Rothschild would succeed him, and that Salin would retire, to be replaced by Jean-Guillaume Prats. However, Prats left as well after four years, and Saskia de Rothschild has taken over direct management of Domaines Baron de Lafite and the château.

Today the estate is overseen by technical director Kohler, assisted with the winemaking by Christophe Congé and by Louis Caillard in the vineyards.

The wines are fermented in a combination of concrete and stainless steel before ageing in new casks, created by the in-house coopers, for just under two years. The finished wines are fined with egg whites and then bottled.

What does Lafite taste like in the glass?

The wines in this vertical tasting covered the period from 1986 – 2010 and included most of the renowned vintages in this period, and a few that were less renowned. The wines each reflected the vintage very clearly, as one might expect.

However, there was one clear takeaway for me from the tasting – it is dangerous to generalise too broadly about a château as classic as Lafite-Rothschild. One has an overall image of Lafite as elegant, refined, classic, but perhaps somewhat restrained compared to the other first growths.

I found instead some forward, exuberant wines and others that were concentrated and powerful. The only thing not in evidence was mediocre wine. Even in a ‘lesser’ vintage such as 2007, the wines were lovely, round, complete and charming. The closest we got to a disappointment was perhaps the 2006 vintage, which was perhaps just a bit dull but far from faulty.

The wines at the top, including the 1996, 2000, 2009, and 2010, were among the best clarets I have tasted this year and show that Lafite richly merits its place in the hierarchy of Bordeaux.

Charles Curtis MW’s tasting notes and scores for 12 astonishing Lafite wines:

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