Chateau Lafleur Pomerol 1997

When André Robin selected cuttings from his Bouchet vines in the 1930s and then saved them from the 1956 frost by cutting damaged plants to the ground rather than uprooting them, he preserved a biotype of Cabernet Franc that winemaker Omri Ram asserts exists at only three addresses on the Right Bank: Lafleur, Cheval Blanc, and Ausone. That genetic singularity is the structural spine of every bottle produced here.

The 4.58-hectare single block sits at the northern crest of the Pomerol plateau, directly adjacent to Pétrus, where an iron-rich crasse de fer sublayer runs beneath a mosaic of gravel-over-clay and sandy-gravel soils. That ferric clay subsoil pulls tension and mineral edge into the fruit rather than the plush, clay-driven weight that defines its neighbour.

Harvest is parcel-by-parcel, timed to individual ripeness, with double sorting before fermentation in small concrete vats. Malolactic fermentation completes in barrel; maceration runs approximately three weeks. Élevage lasts 18 months in French oak barriques at roughly 50% new oak, racked every three months, then bottled unfined and unfiltered with no enzymes, chaptalization, or acidification.

The 1997 vintage — a softer, earlier-maturing Right Bank year — produced a Lafleur that has been drinking well for some years, offering the estate's characteristic iron-edged florality in a more accessible register than the great structured years. Drink now through 2030, with careful cellar management.