Les Pensées, Pomerol, 2024
It’s impossible to de-throne Chateau Lafleur, however, at our barrel tasting, Les Pensées was perhaps the most seductive and ravishing wine in the Guinaudeau line up. Hailing from the diagonal strip through the middle of the vineyard, with a more classical, Pomerol geology, the 2024 opens with gorgeous aromas of fragrant raspberry, crème de mûre, and loganberries that mingle with cedar and eucalyptus, alongside the floral elegance of iris and peonies. The palate is remarkably suave, a true charmer: graceful, pure and pixilated. It possesses great depth without being heavy, offering blue fruit, plum, and ripe cherry notes alongside a loamy character. Despite the generous, mouth filling quality of the fruit, it feels composed and sensual, revealing red cherries, mulberries, and further mineral tones, with a hint of cigar wrapper. All this ravishing fruit is enveloped by perfectly judged tannins, providing structure, nuance and a reverberating, mouthwatering finish. So impressive.
critic reviews
Deep garnet-purple colored. Sashays out with bold notes of raspberry coulis, black cherries, and mulberries, leading to hints of forest floor, crushed rocks, and lavender oil. The medium-bodied palate is bright and shimmery with layers of red berries and mineral, framed by super-silky tannins and seamless freshness, finishing long and layered.
The 2024 Les Pensées was picked September 23 to 30. This has quite a complex bouquet with blackcurrant, bilberry and light estuarine scents percolating through with time. The palate is quite arresting, one of the few Merlot wines with genuine grip and heft, but it maintains refinement on the peppery finish. The 2024 feels long and sustained and worthy of bottle age. It will develop wonderfully in time.
Sweet damson fruit aromatics, good density, Pomerol character, rose petals, smoked earth and grilled red plum, this has touches of sweet almond and salted caramel, giving salinity and lift, gently placed tannins, pulses of minerality that delivers the freshness of the year without aggression. Yields here in the late 30s, higher than average in Pomerol. Harvest 25 September to 3 October.
A blend of 64% Merlot (harvested on September 23rd) and 36% Cabernet Franc (picked on September 30th), the 2024 Pensees de Lafleur is a sensual and remarkably pure expression of the vintage. Evoking aromas of rose, violet, flowers, cassis and cherries, it's medium to full-bodied, supple and sappy with a pure, polished and seamless mid-palate framed by powdery tannins, culminating in a long, ethereal finish delicately redolent of rose petals. While not as deep as in some previous vintages, this is nonetheless an especially graceful and refined interpretation of this cuvee, derived from vines growing in the part of Lafleur's vineyard through which a water course once flowed and where the soils are richer in clay and better hydrated (and farmed accordingly).