This wine has been interesting, if not joyful, to follow. The 2003s, if I am not mistaken, were the first vintage made by the hedge fund that bought the property, and that transaction caused some stir in bdx and here as well. The first bottle of 2003 I opened, shortly after they arrived, was simply awful. Not in a “young bdx” type of way, it was coarse and alcoholic like a poorly made Aussie shiraz. It was like drinking the barrel it was aged in. I considered how best to dispose of them, but ultimately just forgot about them. A few years later, I opened a second, and it was dramatically better. Not really good – not the sort of wine I would buy with eyes open – but given the noxious start the wine had, a surprising performance nonetheless.
Last night I had my last bottle, and it had changed again. This time it had a nose you could actually spend time with. It smelled nothing like any Margaux I have known, but it did smell . . . good. On the way down, though, it was pretty boring. Mono-dimensional, almost fruit-juicy.
Anyway, I am glad to be shed of them. Opens another slot for something better.
We’ve all been there with a wine or 2. I have one more 2004 Galardi to drink up but probably not before I’m 75 and retired. I had even taken it out of my wine cabinet along with another btl in anticipation of drinking both them up only to discover the one I opened was still painfully young. So I reluctantly returned the remaining btl to one of my, too few, cherished spots in the cabinet not to be drank until 2025. I don’t have high hopes for ever really liking this wine but I’ll marshal on.
My remaining bottles of 2001 Pape Clement are just sitting in the cellar, glaring at me. The last two I tried were brutally overblown oak and ooze monsters.
I loved older Pape Clement and I bought 96, 98, 99 and 00 without understanding the style shift that was underway (by most accounts the 96 is the last really good old-school Pape-C). The 99 is very good. I’ve been waiting on the others.
Sorry but not surprised, Neal. Lascombes is like painting-by-numbers, or was during the Colony Capital days, which started I think with the 00, although the 01 was the first vintage they handled 100%. I bought small quantities of 00-05 out of curiosity and sold the remaining bottles last year, such was my disappointment. I think originally they actually had a sort of dream team combination of Alain Raynaud, Denis Dubourdieu and Michel Rolland, which obviously didn’t work.
Each to his own, some like the stuff, so there must be something I’ve missed, but it doesn’t taste like a Margaux and certainly is one wine I would readily cite as proof that one size does not fit all - and that points do not guarantee pleasure.
Thanks for sharing Neal and sorry for your experience. I empathize (as you know) with comments made above. I have never really liked this estate, either, but lo and behold, it seems change may be afoot, at least based on the 2014 barrel sample. Not that there is any need to rush out and buy it. I am (still) waiting for VCC and Montrose as two of my absolute favorites among barrel samples tasted. But Lascombes was not over oaky in this vintage . http://www.wine-chronicles.com/blog/bordeaux-barrel-2014-margaux/
I’ve experienced the same with the 2005. They have changed a lot since I bought them in 2008 and not necessarily for the better. I still have one bottle of the '05, and I’m hesitant to open it now.
I’m also surprised that they are able to hold onto their 2nd growth designation, but I would surmise that it’s mainly due to the politics of how things are classified out there.
I’ve had maybe four bottles of the 2004 in the last few years, and those were good, and solid QPR at the $30-40 I paid for them. I have a couple of 2005s, I’ll probably wait a pretty long time and see if the trend line Neal described continues.
I continue to find that modernist BDX producers do better in the cool / “off” vintages like 02 and 04, whereas they get overdone in the warm / top vintages. Wines like Monbousquet and SHL seem to overachieve in cool vintages. Traditionalists seem to be better choices in riper vintages.
That’s a really good point, although I’d be interested to see if I (or another panel) would agree if that question was posed under blind tasting.
Colony’s stock in trade is taking troubled real estate – whether a stalled out hotel that is a hole in the ground, or a 2nd growth vineyard that is underachieving – and getting it up to at least peer group performance. They’ve done a good job with that for decades upon decades. But I don’t think of them as someone like Francis Ford Coppola (whether one likes his wines or not) seems to have some genuine affection for the whole money pit / wine making endeavor.
Colony put in ~85mm and extracted ~200mm about a decade later, and those returns were probably more driven by the ‘work’ they did (making the moves to get the price / scores steroided out) than any movements in the general real estate market.
I had the same impressions about the '03 Lascombes when I first tasted it. We drank our modest stash early, with none of the bottles showing really well. On the other hand, love the '04 Lascombes. K&L was blowing them out for $30 a few years ago and we stocked up. As Marc mentioned, there is a lot to like with the '04 Left Bank. The’04 Malescot is drinking very nicely right now, as an example.
I tasted the 2005 Lascombes for my ten-years on report earlier this year and thought it was a pretty good wine, provided you don’t mind your Margaux tasting like it was made on the right bank in a very modern style.
The 2004 was decent enough tasted last year, while the 2003 tasted the year before wasn’t in itself a great wine, but line it up against the rest of 2003 which, apart from the northern Médoc and a few right bankers were mostly starting to look pretty ropey, and it didn’t look so bad.
The 2001 when I tasted it last year surprisingly still showed an oak hangover, at 13 years past the vintage. Remarkable. I have a few more bottles, not enough to warrant selling them, so it will be interesting to see from an academic point of view where it goes. Will it finally come good, or just fall apart?
One thing I would say is that, while I can pick away at the oak, or the winemaking, I would rather drink any of the above than the Lascombes of old. Go back into the 1990s and they were turning out some pretty weedy wines. What needs to be done is appoint someone who can find the middle ground, as John Kolasa did so well at Rauzan-Ségla.
I concur. I found the 2001 barely ok last year, in any way seriously oaky and with too much extraction for my taste. Also in vintages like 2004 I found Lascombes always a bit too monolithic for my personal taste. Monolithic can be good, but at Lascombes I don’t find it very good. At their price point, there are lots of better propositions in Margaux.
Chris, I think that one can already ascertain oak influences in early April and project how the wine would be from bottle. Take for example the heavy oak treatment of some wines from the Cercle tastings. I mean, tasted from bottle, you will get likely an oaky wine, in some cases. I certainly have experienced oak influences with previous futures tastings of Lascombes that stayed oaky in bottle.
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