Inspired by Stas thread (Your personal Top10 Bordeaux Left bank - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers), I started thinking about the exact opposite which is to say what are your least favorite Left Bank wines and if you are so inclined, why?
It could be wines that never did it for you or wines which you despise for one reason or another, but, I am curious to hear about what your unique individual opinions are on the wines you don’t like.
Lascombes!
Pape Clement!
The best recent Bdx I’ve had is 1996 Pape Clement!
Pape Clement through its spoofy stage for sure
St.-Pierre
Grand Puy Ducasse
Prieure-Lichine
Pedesclaux
Cos Labory
Croizet-Bages
Rauzan-Gassies (less so lately)
R de Rieussec and S de Suduiraut (can anyone say premox within 4 years?)
Barring Pape Clement which seems a deliberate effort to go for a specific style, these are all serious underperformers for me, that do not warrant their status. It is hard to criticise most Cru Bourgeois simply for the value factor, although Lanessan is up there as a Chateau that seems unduly praised vs my experiences. Liversan maybe, too.
![[winner.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/07ec25c9fd71159fe15d7f1ba5fad64e91238d0e.gif "winner"){kind=small}
Yes indeed - Frankenstein and his Bride!
Well, one could add La Tour Carnet too as Igor. There are always bad vintages of other wines, but nothing so unrelentingly awful as that lot.
This is so sad. Hopefully Pape Clement will someday see the light and return to former glory. But I won’t hold my breath.
Quite so, Jayson - La Tour Carnet used to be a good wine too until the Great Composer got his mitts on it and changed the tune to the Death Star thingy!
I’m hear to put your wine in new oak. All…new…oak.
Smith Haut Lafitte
Leoville Poyferre
Pape Clement
Haha, that’s Rolland!!!
Not a fan of these, either. They make my top ten. I’d put Poyferre in my list of biggest disappointments in Classified Growths. It can be so much more.
Excellent! Michel Rolland, I am your faaaather…now be a good boy and make that 200% new oak!
I never could understand how Parker could take Lascombes seriously - I don’t know what recent vintages are like, but when Colony Capital were in charge it was just priceless fun - the Spinal Tap of wine.
None of them are awful, but the ones that leave me thinking “meh” that spring to mind:
St Pierre
Ferriere
1990s Rauzan Segla
Recent Cos d’Estournel
Recent Giscours
Sociando- I know that’s sacrilege, but it has never wowed me.
Honorary mention to Lafite, which seems to balance every triumphant wine with a terrible letdown.
(These are ones which have disappointed me in a vintage in which most of the Medoc made wine I liked. Some other Chateaux have been equally drab, but I’ve only had them in drab years)
Sociando
Leoville Poyferre
Clerc Milon