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Wine Description
The Story
The grapes follow the same grandmother’s recipe for the cultivation of old apple trees, of which apples have more taste, a genuine flavour and a very particular length that is not only due to the variety but at the age of this apple tree.
Coming from the oldest wines of the vineyard, they bear less fruit, but offer greater complexity. Lafon-Rochet is a wine that is both simple and complex, it expresses aromas of black fruit in most vintages. There is truly a blend and features specific to Saint-Estèphe, a certain warmth and roundness, full of delicacy coming from Merlot’s grape variety.
Lafon-Rochet’s history dates back to the 17th century. The property was then known as the Domaine Rochet and belonged to Antoinette Guillemotes who renamed the estate Château Lafon-Rochet after her marriage with Etienne de Lafon..
Over the 150 years that followed, Etienne de Lafon’s heirs not only maintained the estate and coped with the various diseases and economic difficulties from which the vineyard suffered but also enabled Lafon-Rochet to enter the 1855 classification of the Grands crus du Médoc (the Great Growths of the Medoc).
At the dawn of the 20th century financial difficulties resurfaced and so new owners took over the Château. Thus began a long period of instability until the Tesseron family took over the estate in 1960.
Vintage 2020
In Bordeaux, the heat led to early flowering. Additionally, this led to an early harvest after a very hot summer. As a starting point, there is great maturity in the grapes, and we can expect a more opulent vintage than in recent years.
This year's summer was the hottest since 1959, but the rain fell at just the right time during the growing season. The harvest took place two weeks before the norm and will produce grapes with high alcohol potential and the lowest acidity since the 2003 vintage. As they say in Bordeaux: “It was a good and extreme growing season which , hopefully, also produces great wines.”
