Anson: Lalande-de-Pomerol wines

Any horizontal of 2015 Right Bank is worth a look at right now. Approaching five years on from the vintage, it's pretty much exactly the time that you're going to be finding these wines on shelves and in restaurants – and when an appellation like Lalande-de-Pomerol is perfect to start drinking. [subscriber-content]Lalande is one of those ‘almost there’ appellations; right next to a more famous name but not quite making it. But, it’s also one that has received increasing recognition in recent years and that, for my money, has huge potential to stand alone (buyers seem to agree, with the average land price rising from €150,000 to €240,000 per hectare over the past decade). Scroll down for Jane Anson's 31 Lalande-de-Pomerol wine tasting notes and scores There are, for a start, a host of serious winemakers here that are worth following; Denis Durantou of L’Eglise Clinet owns two estates in the appellation, La Chenade and Les Cruzelles, the de Boüard family of Angélus has La Fleur de Boüard, while François Pinault of Château Latour owns Siaurac, and Pascal Chatonnet, one of Bordeaux’s most respected consultants, has his home estate of Château Haut-Chaigneau. But these are far from the only interesting properties in Lalande. This is a place with a number of less well-known names that, when you start to dig down, bring to life the limitations of the Bordeaux appellation system. To understand why, I just have to take you on a brief tour of the region. The southern edge of Lalande is marked by the Barbanne stream that separates Lalande from Pomerol itself. Its most interesting section is in Néac, one of the two communes that make up AOC Lalande-de-Pomerol (the other one being Lalande), and in particular the strip that sits opposite Gazin and La Fleur Pétrus just on the other side of the stream. For a start, the land is far steeper here, with slopes climbing back from the stream that you never find in Pomerol, and giving excellent south-facing exposure. But, it’s also here that you find pockets of the famous sticky clay that covers a tiny fraction of Bordeaux’s soils (almost certainly less than 2% in total), but that countless estates nevertheless claim to have. There are two estates that benefit from it in Lalande-de-Pomerol – parts of Château de Chambrun and Château Tournefeuille, and both make small cuvées; Tournefeuille’s La Cure and Chambrun’s Le Bourg, that isolate this part of their vineyards and that should be on any Bordeaux wine lover’s list. You’ll notice a high number of special bottlings in Lalande in general (not all tasted here) because the terroir in these two communes is far more varied than in Pomerol and therefore benefits from being isolated and treated differently during the year in the vineyard and in the cellar. The châteaux that produce high-end cuvées include Fleur de Boüard, Tournefeuille, Garraud, Belles-Graves, Chambrun, Haut-Chaigneau, Haut-Goujon, Domaine de Viaud and others (La Chenade could be seen as a special bottling of Les Cruzelles, although Durantou might disagree). Belles-Graves’ Cuvée X was the standout wine in this tasting and is located right next door to Tournefeuille. As the name suggests, Belles-Graves has some of the deepest gravels – and steepest slopes – of Lalande-de-Pomerol, and benefits from that same extremely high-quality stretch of terroir. You can taste it in the glass. Looking at the result of this horizontal, what strikes me is how consistent the wines are. It’s relatively ‘easy’ to find high scoring wines among classified estates in 2015, but it’s rare to have so many wines that are easy to recommend when you step outside of the big-name appellations. It must be at least partly because Lalande takes consistency extremely seriously. In 2008, the appellation created its own inspection agency in charge of overseeing its winemaking charters, and they claim it to be the strictest in France. Every wine, for example, must undergo a quality control that is both on wine analysis in a laboratory and a tasting before they are given the right to use the label (most appellations do this control after bottling but before the wine goes on sale, with a few controlling after the wine has gone into circulation). In Lalande, as soon as a winemaker wants to put his wine on sale, he must first submit to a vat sample and blind taste tests - all of which helps Lalande compete as the appellation offering the best value for money in Bordeaux. [/subscriber-content] See Jane Anson's 31 Lalande-de-Pomerol wine tasting notes and scores [wine-collection] You may also like Anson: Liber Pater wine and the rush for rare grapes in Bordeaux Anson: Irish influence in Bordeaux Anson: What will the new grape varieties mean for Bordeaux?

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Anson: Lalande-de-Pomerol 2015 horizontal

See Jane Anson’s 31 Lalande-de-Pomerol wine tasting notes and scores

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