Chateau Lafleur Pomerol 2020 (Magnum) (1.5 L)

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 ground level rather than uprooting them, he preserved a distinct Cabernet Franc biotype that winemaker Omri Ram asserts exists at only three addresses on earth: Lafleur, Cheval Blanc, and Ausone. That genetic singularity is the structural spine of every bottle made here.

The 4.58-hectare single-block sits at the northern crest of the Pomerol plateau, directly adjacent to Pétrus, on a mosaic of four micro-terroirs — gravel-over-brown-clay to the northwest, sandy-gravel over gravelly-clay to the south, and a ferric crasse de fer sublayer running beneath much of the property. Where Pétrus draws opulence from deep blue clay, Lafleur's iron-laced gravel drives tension and mineral precision.

Vinification: hand-harvest parcel by parcel, double-sorted; fermented in small traditional concrete vats with malolactic completed in barrel; ~3-week maceration; zero enzymes, inoculation, chaptalization, or acidification — gravity only throughout. Élevage: 18 months in French oak barriques, ~50% new, remainder sourced from sister estate Grand Village; racked every three months. Bottled unfined and unfiltered.

Lafleur is the highest-Cabernet-Franc Pomerol — a profile architecturally closer to Saint-Émilion than to its Merlot-dominant neighbours — and production is capped at roughly 1,000 cases per year, with no grand vin released in sub-standard vintages.

The 2020 is described as among the finest in the estate's history: dense, creamy, and very concentrated with remarkable length. This magnum format (1.5 L) extends the already exceptional ageing horizon of the standard bottle.