2021 Château Lynch-Bages, Pauillac, Bordeaux

2021 Château Lynch-Bages, Pauillac, Bordeaux

Product: 20218004817
Prices start from £1,263.50 per salmanazar (900cl). Buying options
2021 Château Lynch-Bages, Pauillac, Bordeaux

Buying options

Available for delivery or collection. Pricing includes duty and VAT.
Salmanazar (900cl)
 x 1
£1,263.50  (£1,263.5 p/b)
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Description

Cabernet Sauvignon 67%, Merlot 25%, Petit Verdot 5%, Cabernet Franc 3%.

The vast, gleaming new winery here has enabled the team to deliver much more precision on a plot-by-plot basis – a real gain in 2021. What stands out is the density of texture and tannin. The wine starts with the customary cassis and cedar notes, but on the palate it’s surprisingly compact and structured. These are all extremely encouraging pointers; there are resonances of the very successful “lighter” years like ’14 and ’08. A wine of real depth and quality, this will certainly reward some ageing.

Drink 2028 - 2045

Our score: 17.5/20

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Critics reviews

Neal Martin, Vinous94/100

The 2021 Lynch-Bages has a wonderful bouquet with intense blackberry and bilberry fruit, retaining the estuarine element I remarked upon from barrel. The oak here is seamlessly integrated and gains complexity with aeration. The palate is medium-bodied with fine-grained tannins, very supple and focused, a little more peppery toward the finish with impressive grip and depth in the context of the vintage. This is a superb achievement in a tricky season.

Drink 2027 - 2055

Neal Martin, Vinous.com (February 2024)

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Antonio Galloni, Vinous94/100

The 2021 Lynch-Bages is rather sombre today. Black fruit, mocha, liquorice and chocolate are all amplified in this decidedly muscular wine from a cool year. This is a distinctly cool-climate Lynch-Bages built on power, with less of its usual flash.

Drink 2031 - 2061

Antonio Galloni, Vinous.com (February 2024)

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Jane Anson94/100

This is impressive, reduction on the first nose but it clears to show gentle smoked oak, bitter cocoa beans and liqourice, giving balance the the fresh acidities that stud the blackberry and raspberry fruits. This is powerful, with a structure that feels similar to the 2014 or the 2008 - a little subdued and austere, but with ageing potential. A high tannin index of 90IPT. Harvest September 27 Lynch through to October 9. One of the best in Pauillac, finishing up with chewy tannins.

Drink 2028 - 2042

Jane Anson, JaneAnson.com (May 2022)

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Jancis Robinson MW17.5+/20

67% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot, 3% Cabernet Franc.

Deep ruby. Black fruit, liquorice and a touch of black pepper on the nose – this is a brooding wine for the vintage. Chewy, mouth-coating tannins dominate the palate, this is a big, bold and atypical wine for the vintage. Richer structure and more density than most. This is laced with the property’s individual character and is impressive. The acid profile of the vintage remains, but this is a very good effort. One that can be laid down in this vintage.

Drink 2029 - 2049

Tom Parker MW, JancisRobinson.com (November 2023)

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Wine Advocate93+/100

The 2021 Lynch-Bages is one of the vintage's bigger, broader-shouldered wines, offering up aromas of crème de cassis, plums and spices, framed by a generous application of creamy new oak. Medium to full-bodied, dense and chunky, with a velvety attack that segues into a layered core of fruit framed by generously extracted tannins, it concludes with a long, lusty finish. Fully 40 hectares of this estate is now cultivated organically, principally those parcels that adjoin the houses of Pauillac. As is almost invariably the case with this estate, it will repay a bit of patience.

Drink 2031 - 2051

William Kelley, Wine Advocate (February 2024)

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James Suckling96-97/100

67% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot and 3% Cabernet Franc.

This is really cool to smell, with lead pencil shavings, iron filings and oyster shells. Blackcurrants, too. Full to medium body with layers of firm tannins, but a dusty and powdery texture, too. Lovely finish.

James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com (May 2022)

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Decanter95/100

3% Cabernet Sauvignon completes the blend. 3.72pH. Ageing 75% new barrels.

Sweet blackcurrant fruit on the nose, softly jammy and expressive. You can really feel the ripeness here, grapes have full maturity and this is plush, mouthfilling and plump with chewy tannins - more opulent and perfumed than others also with more power and body. Tannins are mouthfilling and you get the stone minerality and the Cabernet freshness that really takes over giving this a sense of tension and grip. A really characterful and expressive Pauillac where the tannins and acidity perfectly compliment each other with the muscular and concentrated fruit also giving a multi-faceted dimension.

Drink 2026 - 2048

Georgina Hindle, Decanter.com (April 2022)

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Jeb Dunnuck94-96+/100

The Grand Vin 2021 Château Lynch-Bages ratchets up everything, offering a rich, powerful, almost full-bodied style as well as gorgeous notes of blackcurrants, smoked tobacco, spice, and hints of cassis. It might be the biggest, richest wine in the vintage and has a great mid-palate, impressive density, building tannins, and a great, great finish.

Jeb Dunnuck, JebDunnuck.com (June 2022)

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About this WINE

Chateau Lynch-Bages

Chateau Lynch-Bages

Château Lynch Bages, a 5ème Cru Classé, is one of the best-known Médoc estates and has always had a particularly strong following on this side of the English Channel. Since 1973 it has been owned by the enigmatic Jean-Michel Cazes and is now run by his son, Jean-Charles.

Lynch Bages's vineyards are superbly sited on a plateau west of Pauillac town, in the small village of Bages. The 90 hectares of vineyards (Red: Cabernet Sauvignon 75%, Merlot 15%, Cabernet Franc 10%) lie on deep gravel beds over limestone. For the reds, fermentation is temperature-controlled with extensive 'remontage' to ensure concentration and depth of colour. A special system of pipes transfers the wine from the cuves to the oak barriques (60% new) where it matures for 15 months.

Lynch Bages can be surprisingly soft and approachable when young. However, when fully mature, it develops a succulent richness and a heavenly bouquet of minty blackcurrants and cigar boxes. As Oz Clarke says "Lynch Bages is impressive at five years, beautiful at ten years and irresistible at twenty."


 

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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.

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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.

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