Chateau Lynch Bages Pauillac Bordeaux Wine

Chateau Lynch Bages, Pauillac, Bordeaux Fifth Growth, wine producer profile, with wine tasting notes, wine ratings, a history of the property, information on wine making and terroir, along with wine tasting reviews. If you want to read about other important, Bordeaux Chateaux: Links to all Bordeaux Wine Producer Profiles

Chateau Lynch Bages is one of the most popular and cherished brand names in Bordeaux wine today. This Fifth Growth Bordeaux wine remains one of the most popular, well-known brands in the world today, thanks to the tireless efforts of Jean Michel Cazes.

Lynch Bages takes its name from the local area where the chateau is located in Bages. Bages was known for hundreds of years because it was where many of the local Bordeaux wine makers called their home. Bages, dates back as the 1500′s. Interestingly, the first historical records of the area come from the written records of Chateau Lafite Rothschild.

The Bordeaux wine vineyard of what was to become Lynch Bages was established and then expanded by the Déjean family who sold it in 1728 to Pierre Drouillard. In 1749, Drouillard bequeathed the estate to his daughter, Elizabeth, the wife of Thomas Lynch. This is how the estate came to belong to the Lynch family, where it remained for seventy-five years and inspired the name Lynch Bages. However, it was not always known under that name. For a while the wines were sold under the name of Jurine Bages. In 1862, the property was sold to the Cayrou brothers who restored the estate’s name to Chateau Lynch-Bages.

Chateau Lynch Bages Pauillac Bordeaux

In the 1930s, they leased the vineyard to Jean-Charles Cazes, who was already in charge of Château Ormes de Pez in St. Estèphe. Jean-Charles Cazes eventually purchased both properties on the eve of the Second World War. Lynch Bages has been run by the Cazes family ever since.

The Cazes family has a long history in the Bordeaux wine region dating back to the second half of the nineteenth century. Around 1870. Lou Janou Cazes and his wife Angélique lived close to Château Pichon Longueville Baron. It was here that Jean-Charles Cazes, the couple’s second son, was born in 1877. Jean-Charles Cazes and his wife had 4 boys, among them, married his employer’s daughter. Four boys were born into the family. André, the youngest son was offered a lease agreement for Lynch Bages during the depression.

By 1939, he was able to purchase Lynch Bages. Jean-Charles Cazes was an early believer is harvesting late, to get ripe fruit and more power in the wine. His efforts brought him to Alexis Lichine who helped promote the estate.

Around 1970, they added to their holdings of Lynch Bages with the purchase of land from Haut-Bages Averous and Saussus. By the late 1990′s their holds had expanded to almost 100 hectares!Jean-Michel Cazes who had been employed as an engineer in Paris, joined the wine trade in 1973. In a short time, Jean Michel Cazes modernized the Bordeaux wine making at Lynch Bages. He installed a modern fermenting room, insulating the buildings, developing new technologies and equipment, building storage cellars, restoring the loading areas and wine storehouses over the next fifteen years. During that time period, Jean Michel Cazes was the unofficial ambassador of not just the Left Bank, but all of Bordeaux. He met more people, traveled more often and promoted his wines to the world like no other owner.

June 1989 marked the inauguration of the new wine making facilities at Lynch Bages. In 1990, they began making white wine, Blanc de Lynch Bages. Beginning in 1987, Jean-Michel Cazes helped the insurance company AXA to build a portfolio of quality vineyards, which extended from the Medoc to Pomerol, Sauternes, Portugal and Hungary. From 2001, the two groups separated and the Cazes family company pursued its development in Languedoc, at Châteauneuf du Pape, as well as Australia and Portugal.

In 1989, Jean Michel launched the Relais and Château Cordeillan-Bages, hotel and restaurant and a few years after that, the Village de Bages in Pauillac with its shops was born. In 2006, Jean-Charles Cazes took over as the managing director of Lynch Bages. Jean-Michel Cazes continues to lead the wine and tourism division of the family’s activities. Sylvie Cazes, now President of the family group’s Board of Directors, managing director of Chateau Pichon Lalande and president of the UGCB is in charge of public relations. Marina Cazes, sister of Jean-Charles, is the Webmaster, responsible for communication tools and documentation in general. Due to their constant promotion in the Asian market, Chateau Lynch Bages is one of the strongest brands, aside from the First Growth’s in China.

Extensive work in the vineyards starting in 2005 with Massal Selection

Starting in 2005, Chateau Lynch Bages has been working extensively in their vineyards to protect their vegetal genetic material. The chateau adopted “selection massale” for replanting. “Massal selection” differs from clonal selection in the following ways: a clone is a vine propagated from one single vine, a mother vine, and each plant is identical in DNA and uniform in personality. During the 60s and 70s that became the rule in Bordeaux. Today, most of the plantations are still done with this technique, using nursery-supplied clones. As a result, we believe in the long run, a vineyard loses its identity. To avoid that situation, we decided to act before it was too late.

Massal selection involves choosing a number of outstanding vines from the vineyard and then propagating new vines from that budwood. Massal selection is accomplished through field selections by taking carefully chosen cuttings from old vines. In order to perpetuate the original diversity, we only consider parcels planted more than 50 years ago.

Lynch Bages feels the mix in the older vines is the result of decades of observations, adaptations and optimization on the actual terroir of the estate. They also think genetic diversity results in an efficient safety-oriented strategy, leading to less exposure to a catastrophic disease or adverse condition that could gravely affect a cloned vineyard. To help ensure the correct result, cuttings from only the very top vines are propagated. This is a long term and highly time consuming process. However, it’s well worth the effort in our opinion.

After several years of work, they put together a “bank” of thousands carefully selected Petit Verdot and Cabernet Sauvignon genetically different vines for use in the vineyards of Lynch Bages. These vines reflect the long history and diversity of the Lynch-Bages vineyards. We are in the process of field selection of the merlot vines. This will take another year or two. We started with petit verdot before merlot because the petit verdot is small.

Currently, they have at their disposal a wide “pool” of Petit Verdot and Cabernet vines for use in future reproduction and planting. They plan to complete the selection of Merlot within 2 or 3 years. Then the actual replanting of the entire vineyard will take many years of planning and organization. It’s a long term commitment. We are in no hurry and believe it’s worth it.
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Their first Petit Verdot parcels planted with this technique will be picked during the 2010 harvest. Their Cabernet Sauvignon plantings of the last 2 years were all made from the bank and will start producing with the 2011 vintage.

The large 100 hectare vineyard of Chateau Lynch Bages has most of their vines situated on the Bages plateau. The terroir consists of gravel, chalk and sand. The vineyard is planted to 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 17% Merlot, 6% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petit Verdot. The average age of the vines is about 30 years old, with the oldest vines being more than over 60 years old. The vineyards are planted to a vine density of 9,000 vines per hectare. 6 hectares of vine are reserved for the production of the white wine of Chateau Lynch Bages. Those vines are located to the west of the estate. They are planted to 53% Sauvignon Blanc, 32% Semillon and 15% Muscadelle. On average, those vines are about 20 years of age.

For the vinification of Chateau Lynch Bages, the goal is to the tailor to the needs of each specific parcel. To accomplish this goal, the wine of Chateau Lynch Bages is vinified in 35 stainless steel vats that vary in size. The macerations last up to three weeks. Malolactic fermentation takes place in a combination of 30% French, oak barrels with the remainder taking place in tank. The wine of Chateau Lynch Bages is aged in an average of 70% new, French oak barrels for between 12 and 15 months.

For the vinification of their white, Bordeaux wine, Blanc de Lynch-Bages is vinified in a combination of 50% in new, French oak barrels, 20% in one year old barrels and the remaining 30% is vinified in vats. The wine is aged on its lees for at least six months. The white wine is sold an AOC Bordeaux wine.

Due to the size of their vineyards, the production of Lynch Bages is large. Close to 35,000 cases can be produced in a good vintage. Chateau Lynch Bages has a second wine. Previously known as Chateau Chateau Haut Bages Averous, the estate changed its name to the much easier to pronounce Echo de Lynch Bages with the start of the 2007 vintage.

The style of wine at Chateau Lynch Bages blends power, concentration and charm. In the middle between traditional and modern styles, the wine offers ripe cassis, tobacco, earth and truffle flavors. The wine ages well. In the best vintages, 30, 40 or 50 years of evolution is possible.

http://www.lynchbages.com/