2023, Château Lynch Bages, PAUILLAC, 5ème Grand Cru Classé

Last Year EP $232.00-

This much-loved château, owned by the Cazes family for nearly a century, consistently makes one of the best selling wines. Jean-Michel Cazes' son, Jean-Charles, is now in charge and recent vintages have been amongst the best ever. A new state of the art winery (pictured above) was completed in 2020.
The 2023 is a blend of 71% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petit Verdot.

Blackberry, black cherry, crushed stone and graphite. Lead pencil, too. It’s full-bodied with juicy, chewy tannins. Vertical and layered with lovely length. Quite plush. Chewy tannins at the end. Cabernet sauvignon driven. Showing excellent potential.
97-98 James Suckling.

Glossy black fruit mixes with touches of cassis, graphite, violets and blood orange, perhaps demonstrating more horsepower than I anticipated. The palate is medium-bodied with fine, saturated tannins. There is a lovely symmetry to this Pauillac (not unlike Latour), armed with a cashmere texture and plenty of backbone on the finish, even though I would not describe it as a "grippy" Lynch-Bages. There’s plenty of graphite character on the aftertaste. Excellent.
93-95 Neal Martin.

Concentrated, intense and muscular, not a word that I have used very often in 2023 Bordeaux. You get a deeply-rooted tannic grip, with squid ink, cassis, blackberry, bilberry, liqourice root, slate scrap, pummice stone and mint. Lynch Bages seems to be wrought from a different place than it was a decade ago, impressive, powerful Pauillac, with an eye on long ageing. Jean-Charles Cazes owner, Nicolas Labenne technical director.
96 Jane Anson.

The 2023 Lynch-Bages is a dark, brooding wine. In so many vintages, Lynch-Bages is a wine of sensuality, but in 2023, it is quite the powerhouse. Formidable tannins wrap around a core of black fruit, spice, menthol, liquorice and gravel. This is a somber, introspective Lynch-Bages with a ton of Cabernet Sauvignon character. I can't wait to taste this from bottle. 2033-2073
94-97 Antonio Galloni, Vinous.

The 2023 Lynch-Bages exhibits aromas of dark berries and cassis mingled with pencil shavings, liquorice and pipe tobacco, framed by creamy new oak. Medium to full-bodied, rich and layered, it's deep, concentrated and generously extracted, with plenty of youthfully chewy tannin to carry it along in the cellar.
93-95 William Kelley, Wine Advocate.