Château Lynch Bages, 5ème Cru Classé, Pauillac, 2023
Lynch Bages continues its current run with another vin de garde. This is serious, intense and uncompromising. Not exactly easy to love on this showing; this is an introverted, rippling style with a serious tannic profile. The brooding nose offers lots of dark, mineral notes: graphite, coal dust, tobacco and earth mix with sultry blackcurrants and mint. There is clearly lots of positive extract. The palate is a deep well of inky fruit and minerals followed up by grand-scale tannins laced with detail. A modernist interpretation of a classical Pauillac. Recent vintages of Lynch that have not been particularly flamboyant from barrel, have shone once in bottle. We expect this 2023 to follow the same trajectory.
critic reviews
The 2023 Lynch Bages has a very well-defined bouquet, with blackberry and bilberry fruit, crushed stone that gains precision with aeration. The palate is medium-bodied with a vibrant, saline entry, finely spun tannins, exquisite balance, with a finish that fans out wonderfully. Silky texture and very long, this is a superb Pauillac that might merit a higher score in the future.
Deep garnet-purple in color, the 2023 Lynch-Bages prances out with vibrant notes of crushed blackcurrants and black raspberries plus fragrant hints of violets, iron ore, bay leaves, and fragrant soil with a touch of graphite. The medium-bodied palate delivers impressive tension, with a sturdy backbone of grainy tannins and an earthy finish. The blend is 71% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc, and 2% Petit Verdot, with pH 3.75 and TPI 95.
Concentrated, intense and muscular, not a word that I have used very often in 2023 Bordeaux. You get a deeply-rooted tannic grip, with soot, squid ink, cassis, blackberry, bilberry, liqourice root, slate scrap, pummice stone and mint. Lynch Bages seems to be wrought from a different place than it was a decade ago, impressive, powerful Pauillac, with an eye on long ageing. 75% new oak, Jean-Charles Cazes owner, Nicolas Labenne technical director.
As usual one of the chunkier, broader-shouldered wines of the Medoc, the 2023 Lynch-Bages exhibits aromas of dark berries and cassis mingled with pencil shavings, licorice and pipe tobacco, framed by creamy new oak. Medium to full-bodied, rich and layered, it's deep, concentrated and generously extracted, with plenty of youthfully chewy tannin to carry it along in the cellar. The 2023 is a blend of 71% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petit Verdot.