Lafleur 1995

The 1995 Lafleur should be retitled "normal service is resumed" after the challenges of the previous four vintages. I have tasted this vintage several times and it never fails to impress. This has a multi-faceted bouquet with vibrant raspberry and strawberry fruit, Earl Grey and dried rose petal scents that seems to "deepen" with aeration. Superb delineation. The palate is medium-bodied but has real substance and gentle-but-insistent grip. As it opens, it develops subtle minty notes intertwined with fresh black truffle shavings. There is a lot going on in this superb Lafleur that is drinking beautifully after 30 years. Tasted from ex-château magnum at Kate & Kon's 40-Year vertical in Austria. 2025 - 2050

The 1995 Lafleur was bought and served blind by Baptiste Guinaudeau at a dinner in Saint-Émilion. It's not dissimilar to the bottle drunk in 2018. On the nose, there is black fruit with graphite and game hints. Given that it is now 27 years old, the 1995 is maturing at a glacial pace. The palate is medium-bodied with firm tannins that loosen up with aeration. With blackberry, black truffle and a touch of smoke, this Lafleur exudes Cabernet Franc on the finish. I thought that it might be ready to drink now, but this suggests it would be better to wait. Tasted in Bordeaux.

Tasted at the Pomerol Comparative Exploration tasting in London, the 1995 Lafleur was broadly the same as the bottle tasted the previous year. The nose is taut at first with perhaps just a tad blue fruit than previous bottles, unfolding with those enticing gravel and meat juice aromas that lend this so much complexity. There is wondrous delineation here and like before, there is a distant scent of wild mint, perhaps fennel that emerges after 30-40 minutes. The palate is medium-bodied with supple tannin that have taken two decades to fully melt. There is wonderful depth, gorgeous tertiary black fruit with hints of black truffle towards prolonged finish. The 1995 is best Lafleur of the 1990s. It is as simple as that. 2018 - 2045

This is an awesome Lafleur, but it is also an amazingly backward, tannic monster that will need more cellaring than any Medoc in this vintage. The wine boasts an opaque black/purple color, as well as a closed but promising nose that represents the essence of blackberry, raspberry, and cherry fruit. Intertwined with those aromas is the tell-tale mineral terroir of Lafleur, full body, blistering dry, astringent tannin, and a layered, weighty feel on the palate. This is the kind of young claret that I couldn't wait to rush out and buy two decades ago, but now I have to be content to admire it and wish I were twenty years younger. It is formidable, prodigious, and oh, so promising, but I cannot see it being ready to drink before the end of the second decade of the next century