Chateau Lascombes 2025

Cassis, graphite, chalky minerality, and spicy wood all define the 2025 Château Lascombes, a much tighter, more focused expression compared to the second wine. A blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot, and 5% Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot from tiny yields of 25 hectoliters per hectare, harvested between September 8th and 25th, it's resting in 60% new French oak with a small percentage in foudre and amphora. Beautifully concentrated on the palate, it has full-bodied richness, ample tannins, and a great finish. This checks in at 13.5% alcohol with a pH of 3.59, and the purity here is first rate.

• Nom du critique: Jeb Dunnuck

Chocolate, blackcurrant and vanilla with blackcurrant leaf, some liquorice and dried flowers on the nose. Grippy and filling but light on its feet in terms of tannic strength. You get the body, the concentration and the intensity but the fruit purity really stands out – blackcurrant, blueberry and black cherry with lots of fresh mint, graphite, cola and liquorice. Quite a stately wine with a streamlined finish. Still young and firm. 1% Petit Verdot completes the blend. 3.6pH. A yield of 25hl/ha. 45% grand vin production.

• Fenêtre de dégustation: 2035 - 2045
• Nom du critique: Georgina Hindle

The 2025 Lascombes marks another hugely important step forward for this reborn château. Silky yet quite powerful, the 2025 is seamless in the glass. Dark Cabernet Sauvignon fruit opens first, followed by hints of graphite, new leather, incense, tobacco and scorched earth. The long, sculpted finish is dramatic in its beauty, shaped by clean mineral notes and refined, persistent tannins. This is truly impressive, and Axel Heinz's best Lascombes yet. Tasted three times.

• Fenêtre de dégustation: 2035 - 2065
• Nom du critique: Antonio Galloni

At first, it is the bouquet of flowers that grabs your attention. From there, you notice tobacco leaves, smoke, currants, cedar, and blackberries. On the palate, the wine continues in the right way with its elegant, silky tannins, lush textures, and waves of ripe, dynamic, black fruit, with red fruits, bringing to a fresh, creamy finish. The aging program is 60% new French oak, with a lighter toast, used barrels, and foudres. All the work in the vineyards and cellars has really made a difference here. Drink from 2030-2060.

• Fenêtre de dégustation: 2030 - 2060
• Nom du critique: Jeff Leve

The 2025 Lascombes was cropped at 25 hl/ha between 8 and 25 September. This has a focused and quite opulent bouquet, but everything is very well controlled, as if there is a tight leash on the aromatics of black plum, iodine and violets. The palate is medium-bodied with slightly chalky tannins on the entry that counter the density of black fruit. Really impressive minéralité in this Margaux with a pleasing strictness towards the almost Pauillac-like finish. This certainly bears the signature of winemaker Axel Heinz, much more precise and tensile compared with vintages a decade ago.

• Fenêtre de dégustation: 2032 - 2055
• Nom du critique: Neal Martin

A blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot and 5% Cabernet France and Petit Verdot, the 2025 Lascombes unwinds in the glass with notes of inky berries, pencil shavings and a subtle hint of violet. Medium- to full-bodied, dense and concentrated, with a layered, muscular profile and ripe tannins that assert themselves on the finish, its broad shoulders are derived from low yields (25 hectoliters per hectare) rather than extraction, as Heinz and his team capped fermentation temperatures at 25 degrees Celsius and handled the wines gently after alcoholic fermentation was complete.

• Nom du critique: William Kelley