2012 Château Grand-Puy-Lacoste, Pauillac, Bordeaux

2012 Château Grand-Puy-Lacoste, Pauillac, Bordeaux

Product: 20128003256
Prices start from £240.00 per case Buying options
2012 Château Grand-Puy-Lacoste, Pauillac, Bordeaux

Buying options

Available by the case In Bond. Pricing excludes duty and VAT, which must be paid separately before delivery. Storage charges apply.
Case format
Availability
Price per case
6 x 75cl bottle
BBX marketplace BBX 1 case £240.00
New To BBX
New To BBX
BBX marketplace BBX 1 case £250.00
BBX marketplace BBX 1 case £254.00
BBX marketplace BBX 2 cases £255.00
See more listings+
See more listings
You can place a bid for this wine on BBX

Description

The elegance and finesse of the vintage plays to the strengths of Ch. Grand-Puy-Lacoste and this one of the stand out wines of the vintage. Very pure and focused blackcurrant cassis fruit appears on the nose, with lighter redcurrant and cherry notes mixed with cigar box and lead pencil. A linear quality is found on the palate with some serious tannins and weight for the year. There is a creamy sweetness too, but all the while the elegance and poise of Grand-Puy-Lacoste stands out.

Berry Bros. & Rudd

wine at a glance

Delivery and quality guarantee

Critics reviews

Wine Advocate91/100
Always a favorite among consumers, Xavier Bories is a fifth-growth Pauillac that consistently performs at a much higher level. The 2012 Grand-Puy-Lacoste has the classic, tell-tale crme de cassis as well as some bluer fruits and floral notes. Medium-bodied, its ripe tannin, beautiful fruit and low acidity give it an up-front appeal. Theres no harm in drinking it now or cellaring it for another 12-15+ years.
Robert M. Parker, Jr. - 30/04/2015 Read more
Wine Spectator89-92/100
Racy, taut and mineral-driven, with iron coating the red currant and violet notes. Delivers a long, sleek finish.
James Molesworth, Wine Spectator, April 8 2013 Read more
Robert Parker87-89/100
Aromas of tobacco leaf, roasted herbs and red and black currants cascade from the glass of this medium-bodied, restrained, down-sized 2012 Grand Puy Lacoste. Displaying a dark ruby/purple color and no herbaceousness, this lighter-styled wine is somewhat reminiscent of the 1999 and 2001. Drink it over the next 10-12 years.
Robert Parker - Wine Advocate - Apr 2013 Read more
Decanter17.75/20
Superb colour, all the density of cassis/graphite fruit of a true Pauillac and lots of depth, elegance and class for an assured future. Read more

About this WINE

Chateau Grand-Puy-Lacoste

Chateau Grand-Puy-Lacoste

Château Grand-Puy-Lacoste is a 5ème Cru Classé Pauillac estate which has for many years been consistently outperforming its classification. Grand-Puy-Lacoste is located a couple of kilometres west of the town of Pauillac and is owned and run by François-Xavier Borie.

Grand-Puy-Lacoste's 90 hectares of vines (Cabernet Sauvignon 75%, Merlot 25%) are in one block surrounding the substantial 19th century château and lie on deep gravel beds over limestone. The grapes are fermented in temperature-controlled stainless steel vats and the wine is then matured in oak barriques (50% new) for 18 months.

Grand-Puy-Lacoste combines marvellous cigar box perfume with rich blackcurrant and cassis fruit and velvety power which is the epitome of top class Pauillac at its very best.

Find out more
Pauillac

Pauillac

Pauillac is the aristocrat of the Médoc boasting boasting 75 percent of the region’s First Growths and with Grand Cru Classés representing 84 percent of Pauillac's production.

For a small town, surrounded by so many familiar and regal names, Pauillac imparts a slightly seedy impression. There are no grand hotels or restaurants – with the honourable exception of the establishments owned by Jean-Michel Cazes – rather a small port and yacht harbour, and a dominant petrochemical plant.

Yet outside the town, , there is arguably the greatest concentration of fabulous vineyards throughout all Bordeaux, including three of the five First Growths. Bordering St Estèphe to the north and St Julien to the south, Pauillac has fine, deep gravel soils with important iron and marl deposits, and a subtle, softly-rolling landscape, cut by a series of small streams running into the Gironde. The vineyards are located on two gravel-rich plateaux, one to the northwest of the town of Pauillac and the other to the south, with the vines reaching a greater depth than anywhere else in the Médoc.

Pauillac's first growths each have their own unique characteristics; Lafite Rothschild, tucked in the northern part of Pauillac on the St Estèphe border, produces Pauillac's most aromatically complex and subtly-flavoured wine. Mouton Rothschild's vineyards lie on a well-drained gravel ridge and - with its high percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon - can produce (in its best years) Pauillac's most decadently rich, fleshy and exotic wine.

Latour, arguably Bordeaux's most consistent First Growth, is located in southern Pauillac next to St Julien. Its soil is gravel-rich with superb drainage, and Latour's vines penetrate as far as five metres into the soil. It produces perhaps the most long-lived wines of the Médoc.

Recommended Châteaux
Ch. Lafite-Rothschild, Ch. Latour, Ch. Mouton-Rothschild, Ch. Pichon-Longueville Baron, Ch. Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, Ch. Lynch-Bages, Ch. Grand-Puy-Lacoste, Ch, Pontet-Canet, Les Forts de Latour, Ch. Haut-Batailley, Ch. Batailley, Ch. Haut-Bages Libéral.

Find out more
Cabernet Sauvignon blend

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.

Find out more

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.