Total Wine: $189.97 (no shipping with wines sent to local Total Wine store for pick up) Like many of his colleagues, Technical Director Eric Kolher opted for gentle extractions and incorporated a relatively high amount of press wine (14%) into the blend. Deep, textured and beautifully resonant, the 2017 has a lot to recommend it. Black cherry, plum, lavender and rose petal are pushed forward in this dark, racy second wine from Lafite-Rothschild. The 2017 Carruades de Lafite is quite deep and fleshy at the outset. Around 20,000 cases of the second wine are made each year.ĩ2-93 James Suckling (JS), 91-93 Wine Enthusiast (WE), 90-93 Vinous Media (VM), 90-92 Wine Advocate (WA), 89-90 Jeff Leve (JL) The 2017 vintage is a blend of 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 35% Merlot and 5% Cabernet Franc. In 2017, Jean Guillaume Prats (of Cos d’Estournel and LVMH fame) was named president of Domaines Baron Rothschild with Saskia de Rothschild, daughter of Baron Eric de Rothschild, joining as chairwoman in 2018. Prior to taking over as technical director, Kohler was in charge of the Domaines Barons de Rothschild estate of Domaine d’Aussieres in Languedoc as well as their South American properties–Vina Los Vascos in Chile and Bodegas Caro, their joint-venture project with the Catena family in Argentina. Since 2016, Eric Kohler has overseen the winemaking of Lafite and its second wine. All the vineyards of Lafite are farmed organically and sustainably with some parcels farmed biodynamically. Instead, Carruades de Lafite (renamed in the 1980s) gets its fruit from selected parcels designated for Carruades as well as some younger vines from the 112 ha (277 acre) vineyards of Lafite since vines less than 20 years of age are never used for the Grand Vin of Lafite. Located near the chateau, most of the fruit from these prime plantings actually end up in the Grand Vin instead of their namesake wine. However, in practice the designation was used sparingly for the next 100 years till the Rothschild family reintroduced the wine in the 1960s as Moulin de Carruades–named after a parcel of vineyards on the Carruades plateau that was first acquired by the estate in 1845. First introduced in the 1850s during the period of “ the Vandelberghe Mystery” ownership, Lafite helped pioneered the practice of producing a second cuvée to compliment the Grand Vin. You can check out the links at the bottom of the page to see more offers that we’ve explored.Ĭarruades de Lafite is the second wine of the legendary First Growth, Ch.
Haut-Batailley in the very first post of this continuing series covering the 2017 campaign.
In our previous forays to this highly regarded Left Bank commune we looked at the 2017 Bordeaux Futures offers for Lynch-Bages, d’Armailhac, Clerc-Milon and Duhart-Milon as well as that of the 5th Growth Ch. Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande and their wine second wine–Reserve de la Comtesse de Lalande. We are heading back to Pauillac to look at the offers for Carruades de Lafite–the second wine of Ch.