2018 Chateau Lascombes Margaux

Master of Wine Jane Anson has called Château Lascombes “a towering force” in Margaux, and their 2018 has absolutely everything going for it. 

It was grown in a phenomenal vintage that Wine Advocate places as one of Margaux’s greatest of the last 50 years. 

Guided to bottle by superstar enologist Michel Rolland and masterful Lafite-Rothschild and L’Evangile alum Dominique Bevfe, it shows exactly why Lascombes was granted its Second Growth standing in 1855, ahead of Château Palmer and over a dozen other Cru Classé Margaux estates.

It stands tall with the most storied wines of the appellation, and it’s one of the most impressive Second Growth Bordeaux bottles you can get for two-digits.

Château Lascombes, one of five Second Growths in Margaux, began a renaissance in 2001, when it was purchased by an American group. The new owners hired a dream team of Bordelais vintners—Bruno Lemoine of Château Montrose, Alain Raynaud of La Fleur de Gay, and Rolland—and gave them, as Robert Parker put it, “carte blanche authority to make all the necessary changes in the vineyard and cellars to produce the finest wine possible.”

Enter 2018 in Bordeaux, the hottest, driest summer in half a century, which yielded the sort of rich, pliant, extravagantly sumptuous wines you’d associate with St. Helena, not Margaux. In other words, thanks to a steady uptick in temperatures, this is not your grandfather’s claret. Dominique Bevfe and his team NAILED this excellent vintage.

This 2018 bottling blends 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot, and 5% Petit Verdot, and it’s everything you want in a Grand Cru Classé Bordeaux, at a fifth of the price of Palmer and a mere tenth of Château Margaux. 

• Fruit Intensity
• Oak Intensity
• Body
• Acidity
• Tannin

• ABV 14.50%
• 1.5 hours
• Now – 2040
• 50% Merlot45% Cabernet Sauvignon5% Petit Verdot
• Serving temperature – 60°
• Cork