Château Lafleur

Château Lafleur, Pomerol, 2022

Name: Château Lafleur, Pomerol
Brand: Château Lafleur
Price: 2890.37 GBP

99/100

Inside Bordeaux

97-99/100

Robert Parker Wine Advocate

97/100

The Wine Independent

98/100

Vinous

Available Vintages

all 1999 2003 2005 2006 2009 2010 2011 2012 2014 2015 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

delivery

in bond

Broking

2022
3x75cl
DP
£2,890.37
2022
3x75cl
DP
£3,430.37
2022
3x1.5L
DP
£7,220.74

Justerini & Brooks Tasting note

From the very first waft from the glass, Lafleur 2022 demands and commands your attention. This is by far the most reserved and backward wine in the Guinaudeau range yet it is also clearly a great Lafleur with all the signs of brilliance to come. The complex, spicy, thought-provoking bouquet offers elemental notes, as well as touches of herb and earth. Coiled and introverted at first, with continued aeration, lifting floral notes emerge. One can’t help but sense the raw potential here - there's so much more to come. Powerful and hugely concentrated on the palate, there's nevertheless great refinement to the fruit – it’s deep and cerebral, immense even, yet vital and brimming with life. As one would expect from Lafleur, this is a vertical wine with tremendous length thanks to its epic tannins, which envelope the elements of the palate whilst amplifying the flavours and providing a seamless continuity from start to finish. There have been so many memorable Lafleurs over the last decade that it's difficult to pick a favourite. Suffice to say this is right up there with the best of the best. A superb wine; a Lafleur for the ages.

delivery information

GUARANTEED PROVENANCE

Provenance in fine wine

When it comes to purchasing wine, provenance is of utmost importance. A wine’s history – where it’s sourced from and how it’s been stored – can have an enormous influence on the eventual enjoyment it provides. At Justerini & Brooks, we can trace nearly every case back to the domaine, estate or Château it originally came from; we ship from over 200 wine producers throughout the world.

Wines not bought directly from the vineyard are either sourced from trusted suppliers, with whom we share the same philosophy and rigour in buying, or from our own network of Cellarers customers. These customers’ wines are stored in optimal conditions in Octavian Corsham and, in the vast majority of cases, have been stored by us since the wine was first shipped. We do not purchase wine from auctions.

We feel it is equally important to for our customers that the case they buy and leave in storage with us is exactly the same case they subsequently have delivered. This may sound obvious and straightforward, yet we are one of very few merchants to have taken measures to ensure this.

We have created a system where every case is independent, thereby ensuring a trail of ownership and peace of mind for every customer.

The Journey

Justerinis ensures that every case of wine stored with Cellarers (Wines) Ltd has a unique identifier and customer’s name, almost unheard of in the industry as it is expensive to administer. These details are printed and placed on every case which is logged and recorded under your account name and kept in the world’s most renowned storage facility, Octavian Corsham.

This information is sent from our systems to the warehouse every day to ensure the trail of ownership is verified and upheld.

While customer reserves are stored in Corsham, our physical stocks are kept in Hoddesdon, further providing a geographical separation between customers’ wines with Cellarers and Justerinis’ own stock.

Further Reassurance

Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is a legally separate limited company from Justerini & Brooks which currently holds approximately £450 million worth of customer reserves. It is fully insured to catastrophic loss. Many merchants will state that wine in their care is fully insured, but in reality this is on an individual case basis with insufficient cover for total loss as this is prohibitively expensive. The cover provided by Octavian and Justerini & Brooks is unmatched.

Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is audited by PwC every year.

Critic Reviews

97/100

Chris Kissack,

The Wine Independent

The blend is 49% Merlot and 51% Cabernet Franc, and the élevage was in 30% new oak, and 70% second-fill oak previously used at Grand Village. A real sense of harmony here on the nose, with desiccated raspberry, currants, bramble and blackcurrant fruits, with pencil shavings and violets, the Cabernet character very clearly expressed here. That same feelings of harmony on the start of the palate, supple and tightly integrated, with a silky upper layer of fruits, over tightly knit, firm and lightly powdery tannins. Very stylish, with finely integrated texture and modestly finessed tannins which together lead to a long, warm, confident and peppery finish. The alcohol is 14.5% on the label, the lowest among all the Guinaudeau reds, although it is probably slightly higher on analysis.

drinking window 2030 - 2065

date of review 06/2025

99/100

Jane Anson,

Inside Bordeaux

Creamy blackberry, squid ink, cocoa bean, liquorice, crushed rose petals, intense, touch of soy, broth, clear salinity and grip. This is a well that you can fall into, could almost be io the Left Bank here because there is a sombre edge to it but as it opens, it shows its more joyful side, and this is a wonderful wine. As I said for the En Primeur sample, 'it provides a welcome sense of continuity in a vintage where the byword is excess'. 25% new oak for ageing, with the other 75% in barrels that were used at 9 months old after ageing the white wines. Harvest 7 and 17 September. Jean-Baptiste Guinaudeau owner and winemaker, along with an exceptionally invested team, harvest September 3 to 17.

drinking window 2030 - 2050

date of review 03/2025

98/100

Neal Martin,

Vinous

The 2022 Lafleur was a deeply impressive Pomerol when tasted from barrel. As Baptiste Guinaudeau mentioned, the 2022 vintage was driven by energy and not dominated by the sun, which differentiates it from the 2019 or 2020. The 2022 possesses incredible purity on the nose, with layers of black fruit, graphite and just a hint of dark chocolate. The palate is medium-bodied and quite linear in style, with firm tannins, strong pencil box notes and a sharp and precise finish. It lingers temptingly in the mouth, yet at the same time you know this will need many years to reach its peak. Awesome.

drinking window 2032 - 2075

date of review 02/2025

97-99/100

William Kelley,

Robert Parker Wine Advocate

A deep, gourmand vintage for this singular estate, the 2022 Lafleur unfurls in the glass with aromas of mulberries and cherries mingled with hints of rose petal, iris, orange zest and vine smoke. Full-bodied, layered and enveloping, it's pure and seamless, with supple tannins, huge depth at the core and a long, resonant finish. One of the most characterful as well as most consistent wines produced in contemporary Bordeaux, it will surely emerge as one of the vintage's high points.

date of review 04/2023

product details

Specifications

Country:

Region:

Appellation:

Producer:

style:

Grape Variety:

Merlot Cabernet Franc

abv:

13.5%

allergen information

This product may contain sulphites. Full allergen information is available upon request, please call our Customer Relations Team on +44 (0)20 7484 6430.