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This will need a good 5 years to come around and should easily cellar for another 30 years or more. The medium-bodied palate is beautifully crafted with its seamless freshness and firm, grainy tannins supporting the compelling, finely knit black fruits and savory nuances, finishing on a lingering fragrant-earth note.
#2015 PICHON LALANDE PLUS#
Deep garnet-purple colored, it charges out of the gate with bold scents of baked plums, ripe blackcurrants and wild blueberries, followed by hints of cedar chest, pencil lead, bouquet garni and charcuterie, plus a waft of lilacs. The grand vin represents 50% of the crop this year. The 2018 Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande is a blend of 71% Cabernet Sauvignon, 23% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc and 1% Petit Verdot with a pH of 3.85, an IPT (total polyphenol index) of 87 and 14% alcohol.
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3.75pH, 88IPT – higher even than the 80IPT in 2016. Drinking Window 2026 - 2038 - Jane Anson, Decanter There is grace here too, with raspberry purée, cassis, fig and blackberry fruits set against charcoal and fine tannins that quickly build up to suggest how well this will age. Lovely grilled and graphite notes right off the bat this is big and muscular, and extremely Pauillac. Best from 2030 through 2050. - James Molesworth, Wine Spectator Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. A ramrod of graphite adds to the strident, structured feel. Offers a deep well of dark currant, blackberry paste and plum preserves fruit that needs time to unwind fully, as it’s shrouded in warm earth, tobacco, singed cedar, sweet bay leaf and savory notes. This 2018 is going to need 5-7 years of bottle age and will evolve for 40+ years. Nevertheless, it's still its own wine and very Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande in style. As I've commented previously, the up-front, sexy style of the past (due to the larger Merlot content, I believe) has been replaced by a more regal, at times austere profile. Based largely on Cabernet Sauvignon mixed with 23% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc, and 1% Petit Verdot, it's full-bodied, concentrated, and powerful on the palate, with masses of tannins, beautiful mid-palate density, and a great finish. The 2018 Château Pichon-Longueville Comtesse De Lalande is a monster of a wine with an almost Château Latour-like stature and structure, offering deep, backward, slightly reductive notes of blackcurrants, crushed stone, scorched earth, lead pencil shavings, and tobacco leaf. Very cab sauv showing potential in a Bordeaux style with South African terroir! Already given 94 points by Robert Parker and 5 stars in the Platter Wine Guide.98+ JD / 98 WS / 98 DE / 97+ WA / 97 VM / 97 JS Only 2160 cases of this low yield (31 hl/ha) fresh young dark crimson purple balanced quality wine were made. Prior to this tasting we tried blind Glenelly’s flagship wine 2009 Lady May (90 CS, and 10 PV) from Stellenbosch in South Africa. Certainly the 70s and 80s were better decades for Pichon Lalande but the 19 Baron are both outstanding and they are making excellent wines currently. Interesting to compare this tasting with their neighbour Chateau Pichon Baron which I wrote up on this blog February 18. It is one of the few stars of this 83 vintage because of May being on site in August and having the workers spray the vines in humid conditions to avoid the rot and mildew that showed up at some other properties. The 1983 more classic and still needing more time to show at the highest level. The stars on the table were the 1982 & 1983! 1982 soft seductively sweet luscious and very delicious. 78 & 79 were a lovely pair now on their best drinking plateau. 85 had the usual lighter elegant charming herbal notes but this bottle was a bit too weedy. Otherwise the wines showed pretty much as anticipated though the bottle of 1986 was earthy & slightly corked with those still backward big concentrated old style tannins – and the hard 1975 was starting to dry out.
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The 2006 acquisition by Champagne Louis Roederer is still the early days of evolution but there seems to be a decision made for more cab sauv in the Grand Vin with a bigger style being preferred.Įarlier this month treated to another vertical of Pichon Lalande back to 1961 – which showed the superb class of that vintage and much better than I had expected. The wine always shows so well the vintage characteristics of the year and she really only missed the mark once in 1990 by leaving out the press wine. I have been so fortunate to enjoy many verticals of the Pauillac property 2nd growth Chateau Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande while it was under the leadership of the now departed Madame May-Elaine de Lencquesaing – even out of Imperials! Since 1978 it has been very consistent with the merlot, cab franc and petit verdot all providing real elegance to go along with the main solid cabernet sauvignon variety.