Chateau Lafleur Pomerol Bordeaux Wine

Chateau Lafleur

Chateau Lafleur Pomerol, Bordeaux 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

If you ask 100 people to name the best wines of Pomerol, the top two names that will come up first are Petrus and Chateau Lafleur. While wealthy wine lovers will spend hours debating which wine is best, very few people will not agree that both estates occupy the top spot in the Pomerol pyramid.

The wines being made at Lafleur today are better than what was produced in previous years. This includes legendary vintages like 1945, 1947, 1950, 1961 and 1982!  Keep in mind, those wines are as good as wine gets.  Those wines were produced with no selection. New barrels were never used. Fruit was picked when it was ripe, but full phenolic ripeness was never achieved.  Most recently, in a huge tasting of all the top 2000 Bordeaux, Chateau Lafleur was for me, the wine of the tasting. In fact, Chateau Lafleur is also the wine of the legendary 2000 vintage! That incredible string of early successes for Lafleur continues to this day with great wines being made in 2001, 2005, 2008, 2009 and 2010.

However, Chateau Lafleur did not get its start in the 20th century. The history of Chateau Lafleur dates back to 1872. At that time, Henri Greloud, the owner of Chateau Le Gay, purchased the Pomerol vineyards of what was to eventually become Chateau Lafleur. Henri Greloud was definitely experienced in the Bordeaux wine world, he was also a negociant and he had interests in St. Emilion as well, at Chateau La Dominique and Daugay. Shortly after the formation of Chateau Lafleur, the extraordinary quality of wines quickly gains notice. By 1893, it was considered the third best wine of the Pomerol appellation, following only Vieux Chateau Certan and Petrus! While the majority of great Bordeaux chateau have changed hands over the past several generations, Chateau Lafleur remains in the same family hands to this day.

In 1900, Charles Greloud, Henri’s son, inherited Chateau Lafleur. In 1915, the Pomerol property was purchased by Andre Robin who also obtained Chateau Le Gay in the same transaction. The Robin family was familiar with the quality of Bordeaux wine produced at Chateau Lafleur. Andre Robin was married to Gabrielle Greloud, Henri’s granddaughter. Thérèse and Marie Robin took over management of the Right Bank estate in 1946 from their father. The sisters devoted their entire lives to keeping the Chateau Lafleur vineyard intact and producing one of the great Bordeaux wines of all time. One of the early changes the Robin family made at Chateau Lafleur was in the vineyards. At some point in time, perhaps by the early 1920′s, they removed the Malbec that was planted in the vineyards.

Chateau Lafleur is another Pomerol wine tied to the success and continuous praise heaped on the wine by Robert Parker. Prior to Robert Parker, the quality of Lafleur was not widely known outside the Right Bank, Belgium and a few buyers in London. Robert Parker made his first visit to the estate in 1975 and never stopped writing about the wine. At the time of Robert Parker’s first visit, Chateau Lafleur was selling for about the same price as Chateau Grand Puy Lacoste. Once the career of Robert Parker took off, his comments on Chateau Lafleur excited consumers all over the world. By the 1980′s, Chateau Lafleur was on its way to becoming one of the world’s most in demand wines selling for more than the First Growths. Only Petrus and Le Pin sell for more money today.

In 1984, after Thérèse died, Jacques and Sylvie Guinaudeau, the great, great grandchildren of Henri Greloud made arrangements to lease Chateau Lafleur from Marie Robin, the surviving sister. They began restoring Chateau Lafleur to its former glory starting with replacing missing vines. They maintained the unusual planting at Chateau Lafleur of 50% Cabernet Franc and 50% Merlot. The next step was the create a new wine, not a second wine. This gave birth to Pensees de Lafleur. Over the next decade and a half, they enhanced the image of Chateau Lafleur as a Pomerol property that offered balance, restraint and typicity.

Marie Robin passed away in 2001. The Guinaudeau’s succeeded in acquiring the remaining shares of Chateau Lafleur. Later that year, their son Baptiste and his wife Julie joined them at Chateau Lafleur. Since that time, the wines of Lafleur have continued getting better and better!

Chateau Lafleur is located in the heart of the Pomerol plateau.  Their closest neighbors are La Fleur Petrus, Petrus, Vieux Chateau Certan and Hosanna. No sign exists announcing you are at Lafleur. It remains a humble, understated property. The 4.5 hectare Pomerol vineyard of Chateau Lafleur is planted in a shape that is close to a perfect square. Four different soil types complement each other in a unique way to make their terroir. 

To the north-west, they have a gravel hillock with a brown gravelly soil.

To the south, brown sandy-gravelly soil over a gravelly-clay sub-soil.

To the east, brown sandy-gravelly soil over a sandy-clay sub-soil.

Dead center in the middle of their Pomerol vineyards is a crescent-shaped area of deeper soils with pseudogley present containing different soils ranging from sandy-silt to brown sand terroir. 

The combination of these different, complementary soils gives the wines of Chateau Lafleur their uniqueness, balance, complexity and most importantly, character. According to the owner, Jacques Guinaudeau, those soils are poor, which makes them perfectly suited to grape vine growing.  He added, “It is our job, as vine growers, to do everything to enable each vine plant to find its best expression. We have to monitor and follow the vines throughout their natural growing season, taking into account the character of each vintage and without excessive intervention”.

The soils at Lafleur are never turned. They are simply raked.  This allows the large gravel stones to remain at the top of surface where the stones can capture and radiate the heat from the sun.

Lafleur installed drainage systems that remove rainwater during periods of wet weather. They developed soil maintenance techniques (hoeing, spiking and deep ploughing) that avoid turning over the soil and result in improved aeration in the soil and avoid excessive transpiration in the spring. Finally, they never work in the soil in July to favor the slight vine water deficit in the summer. This aids in the ripening process.

At Chateau Lafleur, they manually prune and work with each vine, one at a time. Jacques says, “Lafleur’s vineyard is tended like a large garden where each plant is given its own particular attention”.  This work is necessary at Chateau Lafleur due to how the vineyard is organized. At Chateau Lafleur, Merlot vines and Cabernet Franc vines are often located next to each other in the same parcel or row of vines. The vines have been marked and color coded allowing the workers to know which vine is which. The vineyard is planted to a vine density that ranges from 6,000 vines per hectare to 7,500 vines per hectare. The vines are old, which gives the wine of Chateau Lafleur much of it’s character. The average age of the vines are close to 40 years of age, but the estate also has much older vines as well because many of the vines were not replanted after the frost of 1956.

The unique quality and character of Lafleur comes from their blend of equal parts Cabernet Franc and Merlot, a blend more often seen in St. Emilion that Pomerol. They use the highest percentage of Cabernet Franc in the entire Pomerol appellation. Once the fruit changes color for both varietals, they begin visiting each plot every day. Jacques walks in the vineyards tasting fruit from different blocks to determine the level of ripeness. The estate seeks full phenolic ripeness. The plots and sub plots are picked one at a time, to ensure they are all picked at the maximum level of ripeness.

The grapes arrive at the vat cellar where they are vinified in small, traditional cement vats for grapes destined for Chateau Lafleur. The fruit that will be used to produce Pensees de Lafleur is vinified in temperature controlled, small, stainless steel tanks. Following a maceration period of three weeks, the wine is run off the skins into French, oak barrels where it stays for several months before they decide on the blends. The amount of new French oak varies, depending on the quality and character of the vintage. On average, Chateau Lafleur is aged in an average of 50% New French oak for about 15 months.

At Chateau Lafleur, they do not consider Pensees de Lafleur a second wine. They feel that as it comes from a specific section of their Pomerol vineyards, it is its own unique wine.

Chateau Lafleur is a unique expression of Pomerol. In the best vintages, it combines power, elegance, opulence and an exotic, kinky, over ripe, dark cherry and minerality character, that delivers one of the finest and most unique sensations found in any wine.  It is also among the longest lived wines from Pomerol as well as in all of Bordeaux. The best vintages take 2 to 3 decades to develop their incredible character.

Not that long ago, Lafleur was not expensive. Catalogues from the 70′s show Lafleur selling for  about the same price as Grand Puy Lacoste.  Petrus at the time was selling for the same price as a First Growth. This changed during the 80′s, when people began tasting this remarkable wine.  Today, only millionaires can afford it. But for people that can find and afford it, Lafleur offers one of the worlds most compelling tasting experiences.

Lafleur is not a wine to drink young. It needs time to develop its nuances.  Depending on the vintage, 15-20 or 30 years of bottle age will add to the wines complexities and unique characteristics.  This is the one wine in Pomerol that not only rivals Petrus, it can even be better!