I had the chance to visit Château Laroze in November of 2014. It is a Grand Cru Classé winery located in Saint Émillion. We had an opportunity to sit down with the owner of the winery Guy Meslin to go through some of his wines and history of the winery. Guy’s family has history with the winery that goes back over 300 years.
One thing is that the vineyards are planted high density with 1 metre spacing between the rows in the vines. Guy explained to me that higher density planting means that the vines need to fight it out for nutrients in the soil and yields higher quality fruit. Once fermentation is complete the wine is aged in new oak barrels that are only used one time as well as wine that is aged with staves. Laroze is a gravity flow winery which helps keep the softness of the tannins and freshness of the fruit.
One interesting conversation I had with Guy was around the topic of corks. Currently in Bordeaux wines are sealed in bottles using traditional cork. Even with high quality corks you still need to worry about losing wine to cork taint. Guy believes that using compressed cork is a great way to help increase quality control when it comes to sealing wine and not losing as much product. He sealed some bottles recently using the compressed cork and gave his négotiants the option to buy the wine sealed that way. There was simply no interest in buying Grand Cru Classé Bordeaux that wasn’t sealed in the old fashioned way (needless to say, we are still a long way off from finding screw cap Bordeaux).
Here are my impressions of the wines I tasted with Guy.
2009 Lady Laroze (LaFleur) – 12-15€ – 70% Merlot/30% Cabernet Franc – **** – This is the second wine from Laroze. From a good vintage with Currant, Raspberry and slight Cocoa on the finish. This is drinking good now, but will age for a couple more years.
2008 – 25-35€ – 80% Merlot/15% Cabernet Franc/5% Cabernet Sauvignon – ****+ – Tannin is very soft and this wine is dangerously easy drinking. Very jammy flavours of ripe raspberry and strawberry with vanilla and slight smokiness on the finish. The tannin is very soft on this wine.
2011 – 25-35€ – 65% Merlot/25% Cabernet Franc/10% Cabernet Sauvignon – ****1/2 – Less fruit driven than 2008 and obviously much younger. There is more smoke on this wine with subtle vanilla notes. Even though the flavours from the barrel are much more present in this wine it is elegant. The bottle was open for four hours before pouring. This will need to be decanted if drank young. This will age for 7-12 years before it hits its prime.
2012 – 25-35€ – 66% Merlot/28% Cabernet Sauvignon/6% Cabernet Franc – **** – This is a well balanced wine with good acidity. 2012 was a challenging vintage for the wineries in Saint Émillion but the wine doesn’t show it. Bright fruit where Raspberry is dominant. This is very much fruit driven with soft tannins even though this wine is very young. I would love to put this into a blind tasting with Canadian wines from the same vintage. This may not age forever in a cellar but will be good for the next 7-10 years.
2007 – ? – 80% Merlot/15% Cabernet Franc/5% Cabernet Sauvignon – ****1/2 – We enjoyed this wine in magnum over lunch at a great restaurant in Saint Émillion. There is lots of Black Currant, Dark Plum, Blackberry and Raspberry on this wine. The finish is subtle Cocoa and Coffee. The tannin is very soft on this wine making it very easy drinking.
Should you have a chance to visit Bordeaux definitely make a visit to Château Laroze to enjoy some very elegant, easy drinking wines that will cellar for awhile but won’t break the bank. The unfortunate thing is that these wines will be harder to find in Canada and the United States. But should you have the means they are worth checking out.
