Chateau Lynch-Bages 2025

Currants, smoky oak, chocolate, and hints of violets all define the 2025 Château Lynch-Bages, a remarkably balanced, elegant Pauillac from this estate that has more than a passing resemblance to the 2019. Medium to full-bodied on the palate, it has ultra-fine tannins and nicely integrated acidity, and it builds beautifully with time in the glass. It should have some reasonable accessibility, but as with most vintages here, the cellar will be your friend.

• Nom du critique: Jeb Dunnuck

The 2025 Lynch-Bages was picked 9 to 21 September and matured in 75% new oak barrels. This has a stunning bouquet with exceptionally pure blackberry, cassis and subtle violet scents, the oak seamlessly integrated. The palate is medium-bodied with finely embroidered tannins, perfect acidity, a touch of cedar and black pepper that dovetails into a peacock's tail finish that “clings” to the mouth. This continues the strongest run from Lynch-Bages since the 1980s and, perhaps with the 2025, it is close to surpassing that.

• Fenêtre de dégustation: 2032 - 2060
• Nom du critique: Neal Martin

The perfume kicks off with creme de cassis, blackberries, flowers, peppery herbs, cigar wrappers, and tobacco, and mint leaves. The palate delivers its message with creamy-textures, and racy tannins. The wealth of fruit you taste, and feel wraps everything up perfectly with its ocean of of chewy currants, sweetness, lift, length, and complexity filling your palate with its weight and density. It is also seemingly weightless, and deceptively easy to drink. The character of the vintage was shaped in large part by its low yields which produced tiny berries with thick skins giving a small, juice to skins ratio. The wine blends 66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 28% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc, and 3% Petit Verdot. 13.3% ABV. 3.70 pH. The harvest took place September 9 - September 21. Yields averaged 30 hectoliters per hectare. The Grand Vin was made from 65% of the harvest. Drink from 2032 -2065.

• Fenêtre de dégustation: 2032 - 2065
• Nom du critique: Jeff Leve

The 2025 Lynch-Bages is a wine only very patient consumers should contemplate. Dark and explosive, with incisive tannins, the 2025 is quite the powerhouse. Huge beams of tannin lend serious intensity and power. In many warmer years, this level of richness is accompanied by commensurately high alcohols and viscosity, but the 2025 is built around fairly classic lines, which only reinforces its sheer brawn.

• Fenêtre de dégustation: 2035 - 2075
• Nom du critique: Antonio Galloni

Dried floral scents, some cocoa powder, mint, red berries and sweet rose petals. Clean and crystalline, a lovely purity and soft chalky touch to the tannins which fill the mouth but don’t overwhelm. Feels quite a restrained style for Lynch, delicate almost, a gentle lick of liquorice, slate and wet stone with blackcurrant fruit. Quite a long style, very charming, juicy but really overall quite finessed/hands off. Ageing will add on a bit of added texture. Grippy, fleshy, chalky but cool. 3% Petit Verdot completes the blend. 3.68pH.

• Fenêtre de dégustation: 2033 - 2050
• Nom du critique: Georgina Hindle

The 2025 Lynch-Bages wafts from the glass with aromas of dark wild berries, lead pencil and spices, framed by well-integrated new oak. Full-bodied, dense and concentrated, it’s deep and muscular, with a broad-shouldered profile, yet more velvety and precise than usual, showing a touch of freshness through the mid-palate, concluding with a long, cassis-inflected finish. Without departing from its customary style—combining power and generosity in youth—it is more approachable en primeur, with softer, more polished tannins than in recent vintages. This is a blend of 66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 28% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc and 3% Petit Verdot, matured with 75% new oak.

• Nom du critique: Yohan Castaing