The wine of the month

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Château Lafite-Rothschild, 2023

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4,5 NJP of 5,0 NJP

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May 2025: Château Lafite-Rothschild, 2023 (approx. 645 EUR/735 USD; selling price on the internet excluding delivery costs), red dry blend wine, Pauillac, Haut-Médoc, Médoc, Bordeaux, France, 4,5 NJP of 5,0 NJP (95 points of 100 points) (25-05-2025 by Nenad Jelisic)

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What a wonderful wine! For being from the 2023 vintage, the wine is unusually open. It is complex, flavourful, austere and nuanced, and has a fabulous balance between tartaric acidity, fruitiness and tannins. Complex, nuanced and sophisticated aroma of blackcurrant, blackberry, blueberry, crème de cassis, pencil shavings, violets, Cuban tobacco of the highest quality and mint. Complex, nuanced and sophisticated flavour of Cuban tobacco of the highest quality, crème de cassis, mint, blackcurrant, blackberry, blueberry and pencil shavings. The wine has prominent tannins and a very long dry and fresh aftertaste that lingers forever in the mouth. Everything mentioned above contributes to the fact that Château Lafite-Rothschild 2023 is a very ageable wine that can be aged for at least 15 more years i.e. until at least 2040. But already now this wonderful wine is ready to be enjoyed with great pleasure.

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The wonderful Château Lafite-Rothschild 2023 will go really well with grilled beef fillet/entrecôte with café de Paris sauce and potato gratin or with grilled duck breast with port- and cherry sauce and potato stoemp (roughly mashed potatoes with vegetables and cream) or with pasta carbonara (with fresh tagliatelle) or with slow-roasted porchetta with grilled vegetables and buttery garlic bread or with reindeer stew with buttery mashed potatoes or with grilled pork chops with grilled red peppers, yellow onions and tomatoes and Béarnaise sauce or with Boeuf Bourguignon with buttery mashed potatoes or with hard cheeses such as Cheddar, Svecia, Västerbotten, Parmesan and Grana Padano. The wine should be served at 18 to 19°C in Bordeaux glasses, if possible, from Orrefors, Kosta Boda, Spiegelau or Riedel. Another option is to serve it at 16°C (when room temperature or outdoor temperature is above 23°C) and then enjoy it as it starts to grow in the glass.

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Château Lafite-Rothschild 2023 consists of 93% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Merlot and 1% Petit Verdot. The soil consists of gravel mixed with sand on top of limestone. The soil of such a composition as the château's is characterized by good drainage properties. The average age of the vines at Château Lafite-Rothschild is just under 50 years, but taking into account that the vines younger than 10 years are not used in the production of this wine, the real average age of the vines used for this wine is just under 60 years. Average yield is very low 25 to 35 hl/ha. It should be mentioned that in the production of this wine, grapes from the vines that are up to 115 years old are even used. After the grapes have been carefully sorted in the field and twice, once optically, in the cellar, they are destemmed and crushed very gently. The crushed mass (must) consisting of grape juice, pulp, skins and seeds is pumped into concrete and oak tanks (fermenters) where the fermentation and the maceration begin. The specific with the fermentation at Château Lafite-Rothschild is that it takes place over an 8 to 10 days long period, that each specific part of the vineyard is fermented separately and that the fermentation temperature in vats is carefully controlled. In order to intensify leaching, the fermenting wine is pumped (remontage), several times per day, from the bottom of the fermenter over the skin mass. After the fermentation the fermented wine undergoes malolactic fermentation. When the malolactic fermentation, which usually takes a month, is finished it is time to move the wine to 100% new French oak barrels (barriques). During the aging, which usually take 18 to 20 months, the wine is moved (racked) from one barrel to another three times and clarified once by using 4 to 6 egg whites. After the first racking, it is, with the help of extensive tastings, determined, which were made during the manufacturing process, which wines (Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot) and which parts of the vineyard will be mixed with each other. After the aging, the wines are bottled and then aged for a few more months before it is released on the market. The wine is not filtered.

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Château Lafite-Rothschild-wines are imported to Sweden by Winefinder.