Château Grand Puy Lacoste, 5ème Cru Classé, Pauillac, 2005
This château belongs to Francois-Xavier Borie, who also owns and makes Haut-Batailley, but the two Pauillacs are very different: Grand-Puy-Lacoste shows much more forward fruit and secondary flavour development and is immediately a much more seductive wine, its rich currant fruit laced with toast, mocha and mushroomy complexity, dissolving seductively into a persistent finish of great balance and length. Quite delicious.
critic reviews
The 2005 Grand-Puy-Lacoste has a punchy bouquet of red and black fruit with light touches of wild mint and sage. This is actually a little Right Bank in style so it lacks a bit of typicité. The palate is medium-bodied with smooth tannins on the entry, slightly savoury red berry fruit and hints of iodine and sage. The 2005 is quite a medicinal G.P.L., with an open finish to suggest that bottles can be drunk now and over the next 15 to 20 years. Tasted at the château.
This estate's finest wine of the decade is the 2005 Grand-Puy-Lacoste, a fleshy, sumptuous wine evocative of cassis, sweet red berries and cigar box, framed by a touch of creamy new oak that integrates with opening. Medium to full-bodied, deep and layered, with an enveloping core of fruit, rich tannins and a seamless but authoritative profile, it concludes with a long, resonant finish. Just entering early maturity, it will continue to develop for several decades.
One of the 2005s that I have drunk most regularly, and it always delivers. Still on top form for this tasting, dark ruby in colour, primary in its fruit expression. Tightrope balance of fruit and tannins, just emerging into its drinking window. Pencil lead, smoked earth, sandalwood, spice, eucalyptus, mint, pencil lead, cassis. A 40 year wine from this point on. Appellation signature in a glass. Needs carafing to fully open up, and then it's game on. Harvest September 22 to October 5, 70% new oak.