2005 Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, Pauillac, Bordeaux
Critics reviews
64% Cabernet Sauvignon, 29% Merlot, 6% Cabernet Franc and 1% Petit Verdot.
This needs time in the glass but unfurls to reveal cedar, cinnamon, tobacco, cassis and rose notes. It's heady and confident stuff I've tasted several times over the past few months and have been hugely impressed by, especially with food.
Drink 2018 - 2040
Jane Anson, Decanter.com (January 2016)
The 2005 Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande is a wine from the château's less brilliant period. In this tasting, it is dark, heavy and clumsy. All that said, the 2005 has aged relatively well, there is just not much complexity to speak of. Muted, unfocused aromatics and dull fruit are penalizing. It is truly remarkable to see how much the Pichon Comtesse has progressed since this wine was made.
Drink 2021 - 2035
Antonio Galloni, Vinous.com (April 2021)
The Château Pichon-Lalande 2005 that was so divisive at birth but as I expected right from the beginning, this is maturing into a lovely Pauillac. It offers compelling tobacco and graphite scents on the nose, belying the Merlot content of this blend, reserved at first but opening gloriously in the glass. The palate is medium-bodied with very fine tannin and well-judged acidity. There is an effortlessness quality about this Pichon-Lalande. ‘tis not the most powerful or decadent Pauillac but its is very sophisticated and refined.
Drink 2018 - 2045
Neil Martin, Wine Advocate (February 2015)
64% Cabernet Sauvignon, 29% Merlot, 6% Cabernet Franc, 1% Petit Verdot.
Dark crimson with some blue notes. Iodine nose. Silky tannins. It is very aromatic and sweet. Round and polished tannins. Blackcurrant pastilles! Healthy fruit. A savoury note, too. Really tannic on the finish, but only on the finish. You could drink this now if you decanted it well.
Drink 2015 - 2035
Jancis Robinson MW, JancisRobinson.com (April 2017)
The 2005 Pichon Lalande, with its aromatics of cassis, forest floor, and earth, is followed by a medium-bodied wine that doesn’t have quite the length and richness the aromatics suggest. Nevertheless, it is medium-bodied, elegant, and pure and a classic example for this château. Drink it now as well as over the next 15 or so years. It is showing better than my earlier notes suggest.
Drink 2015 - 2030
Robert M. Parker, Jr., Wine Advocate (June 2015)
Made in a more mid-weight, elegant style that certainly brings charm, the 2005 Château Pichon-Longueville Comtesse De Lalande has a pretty perfume of red currants, plums, spring flowers, and spicy, truffly, earthy nuances. With medium-bodied richness, an elegant, seamless mouthfeel, and polished tannins, it’s not a blockbuster but is one of those wines that grows on you over the course of an evening. While today’s releases bring another level of everything, it’s still an outstanding wine that should keep for another decade.
Drink 2024 - 2034
Jeb Dunnuck, JebDunnuck.com (April 2024)
About this WINE
Château Pichon Comtesse
Château Pichon Comtesse is an estate in Pauillac on the Left Bank of Bordeaux. The estate was ranked a Second Growth in Bordeaux’s 1855 classification, and belongs to an unofficial group referred to as “Super Seconds”.
It is located in the southern part of the Pauillac appellation, just next to Château Latour and a short distance from the border with St Julien. The attractive château building here is visible from the D2 road as you approach Pauillac from the south, on the opposite side of the street from Château Pichon Baron. The two neighbours were once part of one larger estate, which was divided in two in 1850. From 1978 until the mid-2000s, Pichon Comtesse was managed by Madame May-Eliane de Lencquesaing, one of the most prominent women in Bordeaux history.
Today, the estate belongs to the Rouzaud family, owners of Champagne Louis Roederer. The estate, which currently has 80 hectares of vines, is managed by talented winemaker Nicolas Glumineau. Nicolas and his team also manage Château de Pez, a sibling estate further north in St Estèphe.
France
Despite their own complacency, occasional arrogance and impressive challenges from all-comers, France is still far and away the finest wine-producing nation in the world and its famous regions – Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Loire, Rhône, Alsace and increasingly Languedoc Roussillon – read like a who’s who of all you could want from a wine. Full-bodied, light-bodied, still or fizzy, dry or sweet, simple or intellectual, weird and wonderful, for drinking now or for laying down, France’s infinitesimal variety of wines is one of its great attributes. And that’s without even mentioning Cognac and Armagnac.
France’s grape varieties are grown, and its wines emulated, throughout the world. It also brandishes with relish its trump card, the untranslatable terroir that shapes a wine’s character beyond the range of human knowledge and intervention. It is this terroir - a combination of soil and microclimate - that makes Vosne-Romanée taste different to Nuits-St Georges, Ch. Langoa Barton different to Ch. Léoville Barton.
France is a nation with over 2,000 years of winemaking, where the finest grapes and parcels of land have been selected through centuries of trial and error rather than market research. Its subtleties are never-ending and endlessly fascinating. Vintage variation is as great here as anywhere – rain, hail, frost and, occasionally, burning heat can ruin a vintage. Yet all this creates interest, giving the wines personality, and generating great excitement when everything does come together.
However, this is not to say that French wine is perfect. Its overall quality remains inconsistent and its intricate system of classification and Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée (AOC) based on geography as opposed to quality is clearly flawed, sometimes serving as a hindrance to experimentation and improvement.
Nevertheless, the future is bright for France: quality is better than ever before – driven by a young, well-travelled and ambitious generation of winemakers – while each year reveals new and exciting wines from this grand old dame.
Cabernet Sauvignon blend
Cabernet Sauvignon lends itself particularly well in blends with Merlot. This is actually the archetypal Bordeaux blend, though in different proportions in the sub-regions and sometimes topped up with Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot.
In the Médoc and Graves the percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend can range from 95% (Mouton-Rothschild) to as low as 40%. It is particularly suited to the dry, warm, free- draining, gravel-rich soils and is responsible for the redolent cassis characteristics as well as the depth of colour, tannic structure and pronounced acidity of Médoc wines. However 100% Cabernet Sauvignon wines can be slightly hollow-tasting in the middle palate and Merlot with its generous, fleshy fruit flavours acts as a perfect foil by filling in this cavity.
In St-Emilion and Pomerol, the blends are Merlot dominated as Cabernet Sauvignon can struggle to ripen there - when it is included, it adds structure and body to the wine. Sassicaia is the most famous Bordeaux blend in Italy and has spawned many imitations, whereby the blend is now firmly established in the New World and particularly in California and Australia.
When is a wine ready to drink?
We provide drinking windows for all our wines. Alongside the drinking windows there is a bottle icon and a maturity stage. Bear in mind that the best time to drink a wine does also depend on your taste.
Not ready
These wines are very young. Whilst they're likely to have lots of intense flavours, their acidity or tannins may make them feel austere. Although it isn't "wrong" to drink these wines now, you are likely to miss out on a lot of complexity by not waiting for them to mature.
Ready - youthful
These wines are likely to have plenty of fruit flavours still and, for red wines, the tannins may well be quite noticeable. For those who prefer younger, fruitier wines, or if serving alongside a robust meal, these will be very enjoyable. If you choose to hold onto these wines, the fruit flavours will evolve into more savoury complexity.
Ready - at best
These wines are likely to have a beautiful balance of fruit, spice and savoury flavours. The acidity and tannins will have softened somewhat, and the wines will show plenty of complexity. For many, this is seen as the ideal time to drink and enjoy these wines. If you choose to hold onto these wines, they will become more savoury but not necessarily more complex.
Ready - mature
These wines are likely to have plenty of complexity, but the fruit flavours will have been almost completely replaced by savoury and spice notes. These wines may have a beautiful texture at this stage of maturity. There is lots to enjoy when drinking wines at this stage. Most of these wines will hold in this window for a few years, though at the very end of this drinking window, wines start to lose complexity and decline.
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Description
Experience has shown us that Pichon-Lalande's decadent, sensual, feminine wines improve markedly after being shown en primeur. This is true again in 2005. But if you look closely at the firm cassis fruit and fine tannins, you realise everything is perfectly in place. Although it is very restrained, its true colours begin to reveal themselves on the incredibly long and aristocratic finish. This has a similar make-up to the château's 1996, with more Cabernet Sauvignon than usual (64%). According to the ever-charming Gildas d'Ollone, it has better fruit and acidity than in 1996 and even more elegance—a mouthwatering prospect indeed.
Berry Bros. & Rudd
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