2005 Château La Lagune

Château La Lagune is a 200-acre estate in the Haut-Medoc region of Bordeaux. It is a Third Growth according to the 1855 classification. The estate’s history starts in the 16th century when vineyards were first planted. For many generations it belonged to the De Seze family. In the 1960s it was sold to the Champagne house Ayala and today it is owned by the Frey family, which acquired Champagne Ayala in 2000. Today Caroline Frey is the winemaker and the estate produces 33,000 cases per year. Vineyards are planted to 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc and 10% Petit Verdot. The second wine is Moulin La Lagune. Robert M. Parker Jr. has written that “La Lagune has benefited from considerable investment in its state-of-the-art, space-age winery…This remains a wine that has virtually a grand cru Burgundian complexity and savory character…”

Bordeaux is the world’s most famous fine-wine producing region. Even non-wine drinkers recognize the names of Bordeaux’s celebrated wines, such as Margaux and Lafite-Rothschild. Located near the Atlantic coast in southwest France, the region takes its name from the seaport city of Bordeaux, a wine trading center with an outstanding site on the Garonne River and easy access to the Atlantic. Like most French wine regions, Bordeaux’s first vineyards were planted by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago, then tended by medieval monks. Aristocrats and nobility later owned the region’s best estates and today estates are owned by everyone from non-French business conglomerates to families who have been proprietors for generations. Bordeaux has nearly 280,000 acres of vineyards, 57 appellations and 10,000 wine-producing châteaux. Bordeaux is bifurcated by the Gironde Estuary into so-called “right bank” and “left bank” appellations. Bordeaux’s red wines are blends of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc and Malbec. It also makes white wines of Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle. There are several classification systems in Bordeaux. All are attempts to rank the estates based on the historic quality of the wines.