Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Wine Enthusiast
Dark chocolate and blackberry-fruit aromas and a palate of powerful tannins come together in ripe black fruits. They are balanced with the wood aging and touches of spice and toast. This young wine has a great future.
-
Decanter
Smells aromatic and expressive, dark black fruits and softly fragranced floral notes. Smooth and juicy, so clean and sleek, really such a succulent and lively explosion of fruit in the mouth. Crisp and super cool, lovely licks of graphite and crushed stones give the minerality straight away and really put you on limestone terroir. Bite and tang, with well-integrated tannins and cool blueberry, liquorice, salt, iodine and cola touches on the finish. Really accessible and drinkable, a gorgeous frame and energy to this. Tannins are just fleshy, but chalky too, giving a nice fullness while keep a balanced amount of tension so nothing feels too heavy or overworked.
Barrel Sample: 93 -
Jeb Dunnuck
Ripe black cherries, new leather, spring flowers, and graphite nuances all emerge from the 2022 Château Lilian Ladouys, a medium to full-bodied, nicely concentrated Saint-Estèphe that has ripe tannins, nicely integrated background oak, and a layered, balanced profile that will evolve gracefully going forward.
-
James Suckling
Fresh and nicely reductive in style, full of crunchy dark cherries and lightly spiced currants and minerals. Good midpalate tension rounded by fine-grained, stony tannins with medium high acidity and some dried herbs and spices extending to a medium-long finish. 52% merlot, 40% cabernet sauvignin and 8% petit verdot.
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
Deeply colored, concentrated, and distinctive, St. Estephe is the go-to for great, age-worthy and reliable Bordeaux reds. Separated from Pauillac merely by a stream, St. Estephe is the farthest northwest of the highest classed villages of the Haut Medoc and is therefore subject to the most intense maritime influence of the Atlantic.
St. Estephe soils are rich in gravel like all of the best sites of the Haut Medoc but here the formation of gravel over clay creates a cooler atmosphere for its vines compared to those in the villages farther downstream. This results in delayed ripening and wines with higher acidity compared to the other villages.
While they can seem a bit austere when young, St. Estephe reds prove to live very long in the cellar. Traitionally dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon, many producers now add a significant proportion of Merlot to the blend, which will soften any sharp edges of the more tannic, Cabernet.
The St. Estephe village contains two second growths, Chateau Montrose and Cos d’Estournel.