2016 Château Laroque, St Emilion, Bordeaux

2016 Château Laroque, St Emilion, Bordeaux

Product: 20161012202
Prices start from £155.00 per case Buying options
2016 Château Laroque, St Emilion, 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 £155.00
New To BBX
New To BBX
BBX marketplace BBX 2 cases £155.00
BBX marketplace BBX 1 case £200.00
See more listings+
See more listings
3 x 150cl magnum
BBX marketplace BBX 1 case £175.00
You can place a bid for this wine on BBX

Description

Laroque 2016 has a generous, enticing nose of juicy plum, black and red cherry, with undercurrents of black tea and dark chocolate. A delicate floral character adds an elegant lift. The palate is well-rounded and the body medium-full; kept in check by a line of acidity that continues through to the long finish. This wine is a perfect embodiment of Saint-Emilion and will please enormously whether drunk now, or after a few years in the cellar.

Victoria Bull, Private Reserves Junior Buyer, Berry Bros. & Rudd

wine at a glance

Delivery and quality guarantee

Critics reviews

Neal Martin, Vinous93/100

The 2016 Laroque, now under the direction of David Suire, who works with Nicolas Thienpont (only at Beausejour Duffau and Larcis Ducasse, to be fair), is clearly a Saint-Émilion on the upswing. This latest bottled vintage is a joy. It delivers a substantial, complex bouquet, a mixture of black and blue fruit with a discreet warm gravel note evolving over the course of an hour. The palate is well balanced and impressively structured, presenting well-judged acidity and a classically styled, mineral-driven finish. Everything is in place for a great wine, but it deserves a minimum of five years in the cellar.

Drink 2023 - 2045

Neal Martin, Vinous.com (January 2019)

Read more
Wine Advocate94/100

The 2016 Laroque is blended of 95% Merlot, 4.5% Cabernet Franc and 0.5% Cabernet Sauvignon from vines more than 50 years old and aged in 50% new French and Austrian oak.

Medium to deep garnet-purple colored, it slowly unfurls to reveal a beautiful core of redcurrants, Morello cherries, wild blueberries and fresh plums with touches of lilacs, oolong tea, chargrill, bay leaves and yeast extract plus a hint of wet slate. Medium to full-bodied, taut and finely textured with ripe, grainy tannins, it has bold freshness cutting through the densely packed red and black fruit layers, finishing on a lingering mineral note.

Drink 2020 - 2036

Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, Wine Advocate (March 2019)

Read more

About this WINE

Château Laroque

Château Laroque

Château Laroque is a large St. Emilion estate famous for its stunning 18th century château as well as for the quality of its wines. It is owned by the Beaumartin family and was granted Grand Cru Classé status in 1996.

Its 61 hectares of vineyards (27 of which are used for the Grand Vin) are situated in the commune of St. Christophe des Bardes and it produces nearly 25,000 cases a year. The blend is predominately Merlot based and the wine is aged in oak barrels for 12 months. In the best years it is packed with ripe and plummy fruit supported by a framework of supple tannins and balanced acidity.

Find out more
St Émilion

St Émilion

St Émilion is one of Bordeaux's largest producing appellations, producing more wine than Listrac, Moulis, St Estèphe, Pauillac, St Julien and Margaux put together. St Emilion has been producing wine for longer than the Médoc but its lack of accessibility to Bordeaux's port and market-restricted exports to mainland Europe meant the region initially did not enjoy the commercial success that funded the great châteaux of the Left Bank. 

St Émilion itself is the prettiest of Bordeaux's wine towns, perched on top of the steep limestone slopes upon which many of the region's finest vineyards are situated. However, more than half of the appellation's vineyards lie on the plain between the town and the Dordogne River on sandy, alluvial soils with a sprinkling of gravel. 

Further diversity is added by a small, complex gravel bed to the north-east of the region on the border with Pomerol.  Atypically for St Émilion, this allows Cabernet Franc and, to a lesser extent, Cabernet Sauvignon to prosper and defines the personality of the great wines such as Ch. Cheval Blanc.  

In the early 1990s there was an explosion of experimentation and evolution, leading to the rise of the garagistes, producers of deeply-concentrated wines made in very small quantities and offered at high prices.  The appellation is also surrounded by four satellite appellations, Montagne, Lussac, Puisseguin and St. Georges, which enjoy a family similarity but not the complexity of the best wines.

St Émilion was first officially classified in 1954, and is the most meritocratic classification system in Bordeaux, as it is regularly amended. The most recent revision of the classification was in 2012

Find out more
Merlot

Merlot

The most widely planted grape in Bordeaux and a grape that has been on a relentless expansion drive throughout the world in the last decade. Merlot is adaptable to most soils and is relatively simple to cultivate. It is a vigorous naturally high yielding grape that requires savage pruning - over-cropped Merlot-based wines are dilute and bland. It is also vital to pick at optimum ripeness as Merlot can quickly lose its varietal characteristics if harvested overripe.

In St.Emilion and Pomerol it withstands the moist clay rich soils far better than Cabernet grapes, and at it best produces opulently rich, plummy clarets with succulent fruitcake-like nuances. Le Pin, Pétrus and Clinet are examples of hedonistically rich Merlot wines at their very best. It also plays a key supporting role in filling out the middle palate of the Cabernet-dominated wines of the Médoc and Graves.

Merlot is now grown in virtually all wine growing countries and is particularly successful in California, Chile and Northern Italy.

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.