1994 Château Lascombes, Margaux 2ème Cru Classé

One bottle available. A Margaux Second Growth, and an honest account of it.

Château Lascombes is one of the largest Second Growths in the Médoc and, since 2001, a serious wine again. The 1994 comes from the period before that, and there is no version of this listing that pretends otherwise.

What the 1994 actually is

Two things worked against it. The vintage: a warm dry summer collapsed into rain that started on 7 September and did not stop for the rest of the month, more than seven inches of it. The Médoc wines came out austere, and as they aged a green streak showed up in the finish. Pomerol, picked earliest, was the place to be in 1994.

And the estate: 1994 sits in the Bass Charrington corporate era, when Lascombes was widely regarded as an underperformer against its classification. An internal review found that of the enlarged vineyard, only about fifty hectares were actually producing wine of Second Growth quality. There was no second wine to declassify the weaker lots into either; Chevalier de Lascombes was not introduced until 1997. In a rain-hit year, that matters.

Robert Parker scored it 85 to 86 points and, revisiting it, wrote that every bottle he tasted after bottling showed an unusual musty wood character that initially made him think the wines were corked. We are telling you that because you would find it in five minutes and because we would rather you buy this knowing what it is.

So why sell it

Because a genuine 1855 Second Growth from Margaux at thirty-two years old is still an interesting glass of wine and a reasonable birth-year or anniversary bottle, and because it is priced as that rather than as a great claret. If you want Lascombes at its best, buy something from 2005 onward. If you want a mature Margaux with a story, this is it.

Where this bottle came from

We do not buy old Bordeaux on the open market. Bottles like this reach us through private collectors we know personally, people who bought long ago and cellared properly ever since. Every rare bottle is inspected in person before we take it, and it stays in temperature-controlled storage from the moment it enters our hands.

The details

• Producer: Château Lascombes
• Appellation: Margaux, Médoc, Bordeaux, France
• Classification: Deuxième Cru Classé, 1855
• Vintage: 1994
• Blend: Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc. The estate does not publish percentages for this vintage, and the modern figures belong to a replanted vineyard under different ownership.
• Score: 85 to 86 points, Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate
• Format: 750ml
• Drinking window: now. There is no upside in holding it.

Serving

Stand upright a day ahead, decant off the sediment forty-five minutes before serving at 62°F. Roast lamb or a simple steak. Open it this year.

The estate

Lascombes passed from the Ginestet family to Alexis Lichine in 1952, with David Rockefeller among his American investors, then to the British brewer Bass Charrington in 1971. Colony Capital bought it in 2001 for sixty-seven million and spent heavily; the French insurer MACSF paid around two hundred million for it in 2011, and the Lawrence family bought it in late 2022. The turnaround is real, and it starts after this bottle.

One bottle, shipped from our Florida cellar in protective packaging. Browse more rare and limited vintages.