Winemaker Notes
Echo de Lynch-Bages 2024 reveals a bright garnet color and aromas of fresh red fruits. The palate is smooth and harmonious, offering a supple and well-balanced texture.
Blend: 53% Cabernet Sauvignon, 47% Merlot
This wine does not include the blanket 10% tariff imposed in April 2025. When the wines are shippable in fall of 2027, customers will have the option to pay any tariff in place at the time or to keep their wines stored in a temperature-controlled facility free of charge in France.
Professional Ratings
-
James Suckling
Some baked cherries and strawberries on the nose. Juicy and fresh with medium body and tight, fine-grained tannins. The fruity finish has very good length.
Barrel Sample: 92-93 -
Decanter
Really fragranced. Structured and flowing, this has a lovely gentle energy with both strawberry sweet and sourness. Bright and forward but with a friendly charm. Still powerful, but it’s under the acidity. Chewy tannins, a great mouthfeel with plenty to get your teeth stuck into. Not a light wine by any stretch but keeps the lift from the acidity and bitter bite. Ageing 20% new oak for 14 months in French oak barrels.
Barrel Sample: 92 -
Vinous
The 2024 Echo de Lynch-Bages is plush, supple and seductive, all the qualities of the Grand Vin, on a naturally smaller scale. Silky contours wrap around a core of dark red plum fruit, mocha, spice, new leather and cedar. This is a terrific Echo that will drink well right out of the gate. –Antonio Galloni
Barrel Sample: 90-92
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.