Chateau Grand-Puy-Lacoste 2025

Excellent GPL, medium- to full-bodied with a great expression of dark fruit that is evenly distributed. It’s fresh and precise with grainy, integrated tannins that should only integrate more. A blend of 76% cabernet sauvignon and 24% merlot.

The 2025 Grand-Puy-Lacoste reveals a classic, refined bouquet of cassis, dark berries, cedar and lead pencil, with discreet floral nuances. Medium- to full-bodied, structured and precise, it’s built around a well-defined core of fruit framed by finely grained, youthful, filigreed tannins with a tensile profile. Less demonstrative than some of its peers in Pauillac, it privileges balance and typicity over sheer power, concluding with a long, elegant and mineral finish. Produced from a blend of 76% Cabernet Sauvignon and 24% Merlot, this is the first vintage vinified in the estate’s new gravity-fed cellar, enabling more precise parcel selection—an evolution that appears to reinforce the wine’s precision and coherence.

• Name des Kritikers: Yohan Castaing

This textbook Pauillac opens with aromas of cassis, flowers, blackberries, tobacco, and a lead pencil. The palate is lifted, powerful, juicy, and chewy. The wine is long, fresh, and creamy, and, most importantly, packed with round fruit and tobacco leaves that linger. This is a modern, classically styled vintage. The wine is a blend of 76% Cabernet Sauvignon with 24% Merlot, 13.2% ABV. Picking took place September 4 - September 18. Yields were 30 hectoliters, per hectare. Drink from 2028 - 2060.

• Name des Kritikers: Jeff Leve

A Cabernet-dominant blend of 76% Cabernet Sauvignon and 24% Merlot from yields of 30 hectoliters per hectare, the 2025 Château Grand Puy Lacoste is gorgeous, with ultra-classic Pauillac aromatics of red and black fruits, lead pencil, graphite, and crushed stone. Medium-bodied on the palate, it has a concentrated, layered mouthfeel, ripe tannins, and a great finish. It's up there with the top vintages of this cuvée, and it doesn't get more Pauillac than this.

• Name des Kritikers: Jeb Dunnuck

The 2025 Grand-Puy-Lacoste is the first to be made in the new gravity-fed winery. It was picked between September 4 and 18 at 30 hl/ha, much lower than normal, with a high percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon (76%). Matured in 65% new oak, it has a perfumed bouquet with blackberry and raspberry fruit, touches of graphite emerging with aeration, beautifully defined. The palate is medium-bodied with edgy tannins. Definitely one of the most refined GPLs that I have tasted at this stage, very harmonious, complex and engaging. Superb persistence on the finish, this is a complete Pauillac that is going to give immense pleasure.

• Trinkreife: 2032 - 2060
• Name des Kritikers: Neal Martin

Deep violets and heady blackcurrants on the nose, fresh though, inviting and crystalline – aromatically expressive. Supple and sapid with a real hands-off feeling. Approachable with a clean, clear grip to the fine tannins, mint, cool blueberries, graphite and wet stones. The terroir really shines in the glass. Feels very modern with mouthwatering acidity setting the tone – bright, lively and upfront. Delicious, crunchy and leaves a lasting impression with grip, tension, energy and focus. Maybe a little less dense than usual but more refined. 13%. A yield of 30hl/ha.

• Name des Kritikers: Georgina Hindle

Vibrant, in the spirit of the 2025 vintage, cloves, capsicum, blueberry and cassis fruits, plenty of delicious texture, lovely sappy and bright juice, firm tannins, appellation typicity, crayon and mint leaf. First year for the new cellar. 65% new oak for ageing

• Name des Kritikers: Jane Anson

The 2025 Grand-Puy-Lacoste is a relatively fruity, soft wine for the château, notwithstanding the warm, dry year and yields 30 hectoliters per hectare (in line with the appellation, but much less than the norm). This is the first vintage Grand-Puy-Lacoste made in their new cellar, so the more vibrant style is not a total surprise. Even so, there is no question that 2025 opens the door to a new chapter. Stylistically, it is quite different from the wines that have preceded it.

• Name des Kritikers: Antonio Galloni