PAUILLAC
Between Covid-19 lockdowns, I lunched with Philippe Dhalluin, former director of Château Mouton Rothschild. After pouring the 2009 vintage from a carafe, we pondered the proverbial fist in a velvet glove, sensing the wine’s inescapable tannic backbone underneath layers of opulence: so Mouton.
After lunch, we admired the just-constructed cellar at Château Lynch-Bages. Tastefully designed by Chien Chung Pei (son of the late IM Pei, who was responsible for the glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris), it houses 80 fermentation vats, nearly double the number used for the 2019 vintage. The 2020 vintage will thus more closely reflect careful picking of vine parcels identified in a painstaking mapping of the château’s 100ha vineyard, says Lynch-Bages co-owner Jean-Charles Cazes.
Pauillac bustles these and d’Armailhac last year.
