Winemaker Notes
Blend: 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Intense graphite and violet character with lead pencil. It’s full and firm with chewy and balanced tannins. Iodine coming through. So intense. Super second wine. Like the grand vin of Lynch from the 1980s. 60% cabernet sauvignon and 40% merlot. Barrel Sample: 95-96
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Jeb Dunnuck
Offering classic Pauillac notes of blackcurrants, scorched earth, violets, and lead pencil, the 2020 Echo De Lynch Bages is a big, rich, nicely concentrated wine that shows the fresh yet powerful style of the vintage beautifully. It's a terrific second wine, yet one that's going to benefit from a few years of bottle age. The blend is 60% Cabernet Sauvignon and 40% Merlot.
Barrel Sample: 92-94 -
Decanter
Bramble fruit, toasty aromas and soft florality. Structured and serious from the get go with super fine tannins that fill the mouth and coat the tongue and cheeks, but with a cool, graphite grip to them. Supple but not plush at all, definitely more lean but not strict as this has a soft chew giving a lovely appealing, welcome weight in the mouth. Juicy and vibrant, this has energy and life but remaining refined and elegant, nothing has been overworked here. A really impressive second wine with terroir speaking. Succulent and easy but also confident and well built.
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Wine Spectator
This has a nice generous feel, with cassis and damson plum unfurling easily, backed by light floral and iron notes through the fresh finish. Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon.
The grapes are all hand picked and then carefully sorted before crushing. A very strict selection is made prior to blending and the wine is traditionally aged in oak barrels before bottling.
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.
The leader on the Left Bank in number of first growth classified producers within its boundaries, Pauillac has more than any of the other appellations, at three of the five. Chateau Lafite Rothschild and Mouton Rothschild border St. Estephe on its northern end and Chateau Latour is at Pauillac’s southern end, bordering St. Julien.
While the first growths are certainly some of the better producers of the Left Bank, today they often compete with some of the “lower ranked” producers (second, third, fourth, fifth growth) in quality and value. The Left Bank of Bordeaux subscribes to an arguably outdated method of classification that goes back to 1855. The finest chateaux in that year were judged on the basis of reputation and trading price; changes in rank since then have been miniscule at best. Today producers such as Chateau Pontet-Canet, Chateau Grand Puy-Lacoste, Chateau Lynch-Bages, among others (all fifth growth) offer some of the most outstanding wines in all of Bordeaux.
Defining characteristics of fine wines from Pauillac (i.e. Cabernet-based Bordeaux Blends) include inky and juicy blackcurrant, cedar or cigar box and plush or chalky tannins.
Layers of gravel in the Pauillac region are key to its wines’ character and quality. The layers offer excellent drainage in the relatively flat topography of the region allowing water to run off into “jalles” or streams, which subsequently flow off into the Gironde.