JANCIS ROBINSON – 2022 SPRING COLLECTIONS
Château Lamartine, Expression 2016 Cahors – 16.5
Full bottle 1,445 g. Certified HVE. From a parcel of vines planted more than 100 years ago.
Very peppery on the nose. Iodine and coal, Olbas oil and Band-Aid. Medicinal and shadowy, and fruit that tastes like coal-dust-dipped blueberries. Very, very drying tannins. Elegant, classic, Cahors to the last molecule. Needs food. (TC) 14%
Drink 2023 – 2036
Château Lamartine, Cuvée Particulière 2019 Cahors – 16 +
Full bottle 1,233 g. Old-vine Malbec with 10% Tannat. 14 months in oak barrels.
Quite meaty on the nose – raw beef fat, juniper berry, allspice berry. Dry spices and dry-spiced tannins, more rare/raw-beef meatiness on the palate. Blood and iron and rust and, for me, it has the distinctive and particularly pungent green of what I knew as black jacks. The leaves smelt really strong on hot days or when we crushed them hiking through the bush. Something a bit like camphor, crushed beetles and pine resin. Very, very dry tannins. I’d pack this wine into a quiet dark corner and leave it to work on its charm skills for a year or three. (TC) 13%
Drink 2025 – 2030
Château Lamartine Malbec 2019 Cahors – 15.5 +
Full bottle 1,202 g. 90% Malbec, 10% Merlot.
A blend of their terroirs/vineyards and 12 months in two-third cement tanks and one-third oak barriques.
Young and, at this stage, pretty tannic. Liquorice and ink. Drying tannins. More fruit on the nose than on the palate, but the fruit is there, neat and firm, tucked well back behind the tannins, and it just needs a couple of years. (TC) 13%
Drink 2024 – 2028
Château Lamartine, Prestige du Malbec 2019 Cahors – 16.5
Full bottle 1,189 g. From the Alain Gayraud stable.
Pencil graphite and crushed sage and rosemary oils. Garrigue cool-evening fragrance. Cistus-spiced dark blackcurrant fruit with a touch of soot dust gripping the tannins. Classic and classy and subtle. (TC) 13%
Drink 2024 – 2029
2022 spring collections – east of Venice // Published on the 12th May
https://www.jancisrobinson.com/articles/2022-spring-collections-east-venice
