As always, there are some exceptions. At Château Lafleur in Pomerol, July provided stable ripening conditions. Vegetative growth actually stopped, enabling the vines to focus their energy on fruit maturation. August was warm and dry enough for the vines to undergo hydric st...
Between the estates of Pétrus and La Fleur-Pétrus, amid vineyards, stands a stone house with closed shutters. The road that winds to the house between the vine rows has no signs or indications as to the name of the place. The construction looks more like a maintenance shed for the neighbouring estates than the main building of a winery. However, this is a house that makes one of the most desirable wines in Bordeaux: Château Lafleur.
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Jacques Guinaudeau leads us into the vineyard. He excitedly praises the uniqueness of the 4.5-hectare estate. “Lafleur is a single-vineyard wine with exceptional terroir qualities. Firstly, it is located on a very gentle amphitheatrical slope to the north of Pétrus. The soil is clearly more gravelly and brown than the red clay at Pétrus. A comprehensive soil analysis in 1998 found that the estate comprises as many as five different types: the ...
Once we enter the cellars and see the facilities, we understand the need for the logbook. Lafleur’s production facilities are less than half the size of Pétrus’s, which are small in themselves, and there are only a few fermentation vats.“To retain the wines’ sophisticated qualities – delicious fruitiness and perfumed aromas – we avoid maturing the wines alone in new oak barrels. Therefore only a half of our barrels are new,” Guinaudeau says an...
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