2010 Chateau La Lagune Haut-Medoc 750 ml

94-Point Sanity Check in a Market Gone Wild

We’ve said it before: Here we go again. Are there really enough young Silicon Valley billionaires and Chinese real estate tycoons to fuel a high-end wine market gone wild? Will prices continue to soar or will buyers finally come to their senses, causing the bubble to burst?

Those who suggest that prices will continue to climb argue that fine-wine collecting has become fashionable with the nouveau riche, and that there still aren’t enough 94- to 100-point wines to satiate youthful appetites.

Others counter that with Robert Parker on the verge of retirement, and in a world where Parker ratings no longer stoke demand and GUARANTEE resell value, uber-rich millennials, sobered by uncertain ROI, will back off … and the market will reset.

We learned not to chase an overheated market in 1989-1990. Instead, we argue for fiscal sanity, and for ferreting out the tried-and-true — bottles like the voluptuous 2010 Château La Lagune, a wine Parker described as an “essential drinking experience.”

The 2010 vintage in Bordeaux remains the most extraordinary of our lifetimes — in our view, outpointing even 1949, 1959, 1961, 2005, and 2009. Dozens of Left Bank châteaux crafted what The Wine Advocate rated one of their greatest achievements of the last century. Among the superstars of the Haut-Médoc, few outperformed Caroline Frey’s Château La Lagune.

Tasted on April 12th in Pauillac from a bottle drawn directly from the cellar where it was bottled in 2012. Opaque purple. Plush aromas of crushed blackberry, black cherry, and Asian spice, framed by new-wood cedar. Big, bold, and full-bodied, velour-like in texture, showing exquisite black-fruit purity, polish, and precision. Surprisingly forward and approachable without decanting, it would take nearly two hours for the savory and sumptuous tannins of this extraordinary vintage to capture center stage, arguing elegantly, as Parker suggests, for another 20 years of cellar slumber.

94 points from The Wine Advocate. 240 bottles have been secured directly from the château. Offered at $75/bottle — a most refreshing outlier in a market gone wild.