2025 Château Lafleur - 1er OHK

The 2025 Lafleur is a soft, open-knit wine with mid-weight structure and modest complexity by the standards of this property and the Grand Vin. Perhaps this will gain more volume and complexity with time in barrel. Ultimately, though, the 2025 comes across as diluted and light at this stage. 
- Antonio Galloni (04/2026)

Deep garnet-purple in color, the 2025 Lafleur is closed to begin, needing a lot of patient swirling to unlock scents of ripe plums and juicy blackberries, opening out to reveal a fragrant undercurrent of violets, licorice, mint tea, and underbrush with a hint of mossy tree bark. The medium-bodied palate is the archetypal iron fist in a velvet glove—at once powerful and taut with its stacked black fruit, floral, and mineral layers and very firm tannins, yet velvety-textured with incredible tension, finishing very long, perfumed, and graceful with a persistent hum of minerals. Edifying. The blend is 49% Merlot and 51% Bouchet (Cabernet Franc). The alcohol is 13.5%. (04/2026)

The 2025 Lafleur is generous and expressive, bursting with aromas of sweet cherries and raspberries mingled with notions of licorice, anise and violets. Full-bodied, dense and muscular, with a fleshy attack that segues into an ample, layered core of primary fruit, it's built around plenty of sweet, powdery tannin. This is a large-scaled Lafleur endowed with everything in abundance.
- William Kelley (04/2026)