Chateau Pichon 2019

The 2019 Pichon-Longueville Baron will go down as one of this ch?teau’s great wines of the modern era, along with 2016, 2010 and 1989. Unfurling in the glass with aromas of cassis and plums mingled with notions of cigar wrapper, sweet loamy soil and violets, it’s full-bodied, velvety and layered, with superb concentration, lively acids and rich, powdery tannins. Perfumed and resonant, this is a profound young Pauillac that bears more of a resemblance to its neighbor Ch?teau Latour than to Pichon Lalande this year. Pichon Baron was one of the great deals of the en primeur campaign, and readers who purchased futures are to be congratulated on their foresight.

The numbers speak for themselves: until 2000, Pichon-Longueville Baron produced some 350,000 bottles per year; since 2001, that figure has fallen to 160,000. Managing director Christian Seely’s first decision on arriving at the property was to reduce production, focusing the grand vin on Cabernet Sauvignon growing on the deep gravel terraces opposite Ch?teau Latour that have always been the heart of this historic estate and which were the source of the great duo of 1989 and 1990 before being joined by other holdings after a series of acquisitions in the early 1990s. The results speak for themselves in the form of a series of excellent vintages, and things improved further with the construction of a new barrel cellar in 2006, permitting better temperature control and more precision during ?levage. In style, Pichon Baron these days has more in common stylistically with the depth and structure of Latour than it does with the perfumed sensuality of its sibling, Pichon Lalande; and in quality, it’s clearly one of contemporary Bordeaux’s greatest wines. It’s hard to know whether 2010, 2016 or 2019 will emerge as the best Pichon Baron of the decade?and of Seely’s tenure up to the time of writing?but what is certain is that the 2019 is a striking wine that any Bordeaux lover would want to have in their cellar.