2016 Lynch Bages -- and the fate of the world -- has been uncorked.

[Nicklasss]

I won't copy your 2016 Château Lynch Bages post Jim, but this is rude. I understand that some might be shocked, upset, uptight, but at the same time, it always been like this, the truth hurts and most of the time is shocking!

The first paragraph of Musigny 151's post sum my position well.

And to those who try to take the defense of Lynch Bages with the different critics assessment, well is Pontet Canet a Second of First Growth because most of critics rave about it?

The debate is coming to an end. And doing a vertical tasting of Lynch Bages would be so "OUT", i'm scared attendance will be low. If you want to be "IN", try vertical of Issan, Calon Segur or Haut-Bailly instead?

Last, Comte and blanquito, it is like you skipped that great "Second Growth" that is Lynch Bages in your 2021 Bordeaux escapade... doesn't worth it?

I still keep an open mind and agree that Jim, the greatest defender of the 1989 Lynch Bages, that is remakably writing that the 1990, 1996 and 2000 are special too, should give back a try to the 2016 Lynch Bages in a few years... to maybe change his mind and bring the "Poor man Mouton" from Pauillac to a Fourth or Third Growth!

[Nicklasss]

Or is it the last Jimhow trickery, to get the 2016 Lynch Bages market price down, and than he'll be buying 2 cases?

[JimHow]

Great to see you and the kids on FaceTime last night, Nicola!
Hey, it's a good wine, 93 points is nothing to slouch about.
I honestly had plans to make a glorious announcement last night officially blessing the elevation to Second growth status, I even had renowned lawyer and philanthropist Jimmy L.B. How at the ready for a guest appearance....
I have absolutely no hidden agenda, I'm not trying to troll anyone. I truly believe Pichon Baron has left this estate well behind.
I'm very happy that Comte, Jeff Leve, and all of the others in that august crowd of experts like it.
I admire and relish Comte's passionate defense of that great favorite claret of the British Empire.
That's awesome, that's what being a Bordeaux wine enthusiast is all about!
Perhaps I'm just idealizing the 1980s Jean Michel Cazes glory days, pining for the greatness of "the way it used to be...."
All I know is, there never came a point last night where I said, wow, this wine is really stunning.
And some would say it doesn't take much to "wow" me when it comes to Bordeaux.
Heck, I literally said "wow" out loud a couple weeks ago, when I pulled out one of my 20 bottles of 2016 Sociando Mallet in the name of science.
Now THAT'S a wine you would expect to be closed and awkward.
It was obviously very young indeed, but everything about it -- the nose, the palate, the color -- was knocking me out of my chair, it was clearly a wine that was going to last many years, it had that great Sociando character to it, it made me stir.
I just thought the 2016 Lynch was as boring as a 1993 Batailly....
Someday, I hope to aspire to the greatness of assessment of wine palate of Comte, Leve, and all of the other legendary wine tasters mentioned above. I know I am not worthy -- I am a mere country lawyer from the great State of Maine -- but I promise I will do everything I can to aspire to such wisdom. It is an aspiration of which I can only dream.

[marcs]

So I tried 2016 Pichon Baron almost two years ago and had my own experience with Not Liking the Sainted 2016 Vintage. Here is my previously posted TN on the 2016 PB, also a wine reviewed with messianic enthusiasm by Levenberg, Leve, Neal Martin, etc. etc. etc. Possibly I just hit it at a bad time or had inflated expectations, but note the way I describe it as a superficially "very good" wine but one that did not actually bring joy or create a "wow!" feeling when I tried it -- something that I have experienced several times with your new-model Bordeaux.

_______________________
2016 Pichon Baron -- now here was a wine where I came in with VERY high expectations. Because of the rep of the producer and vintage and universal raves by the likes of our own Blanquito, I went long -- very long -- on this new release. In fact this was probably my biggest investment in a single expensive wine EVER, certainly a new release before ever tasting it. I bought ten bottles total and burned this one to taste it in its youth. Now, in general high expectations set you up for disappointment so this may have contributed to my experience -- I was expecting to be blown away and in fact to recall the formative wine experiences I had many years ago tasting the 2000 Pichon Baron young, which was one among maybe half a dozen experiences that set me on the road to my current state of extreme wine fanaticism. But of course such experiences cannot be scheduled or predicted.

Anyway, this wine gave an impression of extreme smoothness and polish combined with a very dark fruited and almost heavy quality. I won't call that dark-fruited quality "pruney", because it wasn't pruney, but the very fact that the word came to my mind, if only to be rejected, is not a good sign. It was so polished and smooth that I couldn't call the weight or texture heavy, because that would have meant it had a hair out of place and it didn't really have a hair out of place, but it did sort of settle on your mouth in a way that was vaguely reminiscent of being heavy in the same way the almost excessively dark fruit was vaguely reminiscent of being pruney while not actually being so. Perhaps the most disappointing part was the finish, which I found rather sour, not in a bitter or biting kind of way at all, but just in an oppressive "I am not fun" kind of way. That was the big problem with the wine. It definitely wasn't a bad wine, in fact it was a very good wine in the sense that the entire texture and character of the wine screamed I AM A VERY GOOD HIGH END WINE, but it lacked joy, fun, lift, and pizzazz. It especially lacked one kind of joy I was looking for, namely that drinking it did not lead me to be joyful that I owned nine more bottles of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not unhappy that I own them, this is a very young wine yet, this was obviously infanticide, and it is clearly set for a very long and rewarding aging process, so I'm curious to see how it turns out. But I am not JOYFUL that I own them and that's a disappointment.

[JimHow]

Wow… that sounds a lot like my Lynch experience last night.
There just wasn’t a lot of joy….

[Comte Flaneur]

So I tried 2016 Pichon Baron almost two years ago and had my own experience with Not Liking the Sainted 2016 Vintage. Here is my previously posted TN on the 2016 PB, also a wine reviewed with messianic enthusiasm by Levenberg, Leve, Neal Martin, etc. etc. etc. Possibly I just hit it at a bad time or had inflated expectations, but note the way I describe it as a superficially "very good" wine but one that did not actually bring joy or create a "wow!" feeling when I tried it -- something that I have experienced several times with your new-model Bordeaux.

_______________________
2016 Pichon Baron -- now here was a wine where I came in with VERY high expectations. Because of the rep of the producer and vintage and universal raves by the likes of our own Blanquito, I went long -- very long -- on this new release. In fact this was probably my biggest investment in a single expensive wine EVER, certainly a new release before ever tasting it. I bought ten bottles total and burned this one to taste it in its youth. Now, in general high expectations set you up for disappointment so this may have contributed to my experience -- I was expecting to be blown away and in fact to recall the formative wine experiences I had many years ago tasting the 2000 Pichon Baron young, which was one among maybe half a dozen experiences that set me on the road to my current state of extreme wine fanaticism. But of course such experiences cannot be scheduled or predicted.

Anyway, this wine gave an impression of extreme smoothness and polish combined with a very dark fruited and almost heavy quality. I won't call that dark-fruited quality "pruney", because it wasn't pruney, but the very fact that the word came to my mind, if only to be rejected, is not a good sign. It was so polished and smooth that I couldn't call the weight or texture heavy, because that would have meant it had a hair out of place and it didn't really have a hair out of place, but it did sort of settle on your mouth in a way that was vaguely reminiscent of being heavy in the same way the almost excessively dark fruit was vaguely reminiscent of being pruney while not actually being so. Perhaps the most disappointing part was the finish, which I found rather sour, not in a bitter or biting kind of way at all, but just in an oppressive "I am not fun" kind of way. That was the big problem with the wine. It definitely wasn't a bad wine, in fact it was a very good wine in the sense that the entire texture and character of the wine screamed I AM A VERY GOOD HIGH END WINE, but it lacked joy, fun, lift, and pizzazz. It especially lacked one kind of joy I was looking for, namely that drinking it did not lead me to be joyful that I owned nine more bottles of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not unhappy that I own them, this is a very young wine yet, this was obviously infanticide, and it is clearly set for a very long and rewarding aging process, so I'm curious to see how it turns out. But I am not JOYFUL that I own them and that's a disappointment.

You are drinking at the worst possible time Marc. The 2016s are shut down hard now. They were magnificent in 2018. They are now in a deep slumber. It is ridiculous to jump to wild conclusions on this basis. Just nuts. What a waste. The 1996s we had last night have only just arrived in their drinking windows.

[stefan]

As Ian said, this is not the time to be drinking high grade 2016 Pauillac or most other 2016 classified Bordeaux. If the 2016 Lynch tasted good now I would be suspicious of its developing into a top wine.

[Blanquito]

If the 2016 Lynch tasted good now I would be suspicious of its developing into … wine.

Modified slightly, for emphasis.

[JimHow]

Hmmm, I thought the 2010 Pichon Baron was universally considered as yummy when we all tasted it at the estate in 2015, everyone was oohing and aahing about that five year old behemoth.
(We bought Alex a magnum of it as a gift for all of his work on the trip.)
Wasn't the 2014 VCC just tasted and obsessed over?
The 1989 Lynch was so breathtaking in the late 1990s that it led to an obsession of the wines of Bordeaux that produced this website.
I was "wowed" by the youthful 2016 Sociando a couple weeks ago....
Excuses, excuses, excuses.... As I said above, I have factored in the age of the wine in my assessment.
I know the "joy" moment of which Marcus is speaking, I saw no hint of it from the good-but-not great 2016 Lynch, nor, really, from any other Lynch since 1990.

[JimHow]

But, again.... My conscience is clear.
I don't express my opinions based on what the "experts" say, but rather on my no-agenda impressions of a wine.
And, most importantly, to each his own!

[Comte Flaneur]

Yes indeed.

Different wines close down at different times. Who knows? The 2019s may never close down but I bet some of them do, and I would not be surprised if some of them don’t.

Yes when we tasted the 2010 Baron in 2015 it was fantastic, one of the wines of the tour like the three year old 2012 LLC that we all went gaga over.

But a question for you Jim. Would any sane person who had a case of each take them out now for drinking? I would think that be quite unlikely, but as you say each to his own. I own some of each courtesy our 2015 tour but I am not thinking of drinking them in the 2020s.

Where I was brought up the age of consent is 16. That is not an entirely perfect analogy but as far as I can tell the philosophy behind modern day Lynches is to make classic Bordeaux that stand the test of time and reward patience, rather than instant gratification.

[Dionysus]

A couple of observations to make here. But ultimately I think one sole bottle at any one time can't provide sufficient evidence to write of the wine in totality.

Different wines definitely close down at different times - what's true for 2010 Baron will most likely not be true for 2010 Lynch, never mind 2016 Lynch. So I don't think comparisons can be make in any meaningful way. The "closing-down" phase for an entire vintage should be somewhat closer, but again, these are only useful generalisations. So 2016 Sociando wowing you a few weeks ago and still being open for business, does not guarantee that all 2016's are still open for business.

Jim, you could have just had an 'off' bottle no? Given technology advancements this should be less and less likely I guess, but can still happen. To emphasise the point, I recently had a bottle of a 2016 from Cotes de Castillion and is it was delicious, excellent QPR...a solid 90 effort. A week or so later, I had the same wine and it didn't really work for me at all...an 84 being generous!!! It wasn't obviously off, it just didn't deliver the same zing for me the second time. This was the exact same wine from the same vintage, purchased at the same time from the same source and stored in the same way.

You clearly have an emotional connection and attachment to the 89 vintage of LynchB, the "the greatest wine ever produced, from any vintage, in any region, in the history of the human species". Trying to relive and recapture that exact same feeling, seeking the same "breathtakingly thrilling experience" is always going to end in disappointment. When seeking and perhaps expecting perfection, the bitter disappointment when not achieved could be so overwhelmingly anticlimactic; maybe enough disappointment to mark what should be a 96/97 point wine down to a 93, entirely unconsciously so.

FWIW, I've tasted 2016 Lynch Bages just the once, during the holiday's last year. 94pts.

Conor

[JimHow]

Conor…
If I didn’t drink the 2016, I would have voted to keep Lynch as a fifth growth. I just have not been impressed by Lynch Bages for over thirty years. I was hoping that the 2016 would change my mind. There was nothing that I saw from the acknowledged ”young and awkward” 2016 Lynch that changed my mind. I am happy that others like it, though.

I have been much more impressed by young wines like, say, 2014 Ducru, 2015-16 Giscours, all the Calon Segurs and Pichon Barons and Leoville Bartons of the past twenty years, etc., etc., the list goes on and on and on. I think MANY estates are producing consistently better wines year after year than Lynch.

[Nicklasss]

Traditional BWE thread drift:

A memory from the 2015 BWE Bordeaux dream tour : i remember that at one Château, as we were not used to taste red Bordeaux wines so young, we asked how we could know if a red Bordeaux that young is/will be a great wine? The answer came easily: a great red Bordeaux wine is great from Day 1 to It's last day, with no closing down phase.

That doesn't mean that some Bordeaux wines that close down can't be great wines by the way.

[s*d*r]

Lynch does not make wines that could be drunk very young like they did in the 1980s, but the best way to resolve this matter is that we organise a Lynch Bages dinner - somewhere like New York City - in 2022 or even 2023 and get as many vintages as possible - and double decant the younger wines. Only then can we collectively come to an informed judgement about the deserved status of this wine.

Based on my experiences, especially my recent experiences, with the 1995 and 2004, which romped home to victory in horizontal tasting dinners, Lynch deserves its super second accolade. And the market agrees.

Lynch Bages tasting a few days ago:
2013 - drinkable but no one went back for a refill
2002 - really quite good for drinking now, well balanced
2000 - very concentrated, bold, über fruity, much too young, not sure where this is going
1990 - a softer version of the ‘89, quickly forgotten in this lineup, marginally a disappointing bottle
1989 - a massive beast, so young, hasn’t budged in 10+ years, the most primary ‘89 of all, has the structure to become truly great
1982 - surprisingly delicate and elegant, silky, very mature but not feeble, best if you value complexity and harmony over fruit

Not enough evidence to convince me Lynch Bages is a second but more than enough to persuade me to find it and drink it with pleasure. A Bordeaux lover’s Bordeaux.

[JimHow]

Mmmmm doggie, well done indeed Stuart.
The 1989 Lynch is a hundred year wine, I have three left in my cellar, courtesy of MichaelP bringing them cross country for me.

[Blanquito]

Well done, Stu!

The 89 Lynch sure is something. At BWE Denver in 2019, I also found the Lynch to be the firmest wine at the Saturday ‘89 Horizontal Extravaganza, though I thought the Petrus and the LMHB showed the youngest in terms of primary fruit. Tim’s bottle of the 89 Lynch in DC last month seemed much more in the zone than the one in Denver. Too bad about the 90 Lynch’s poor showing.

Your 82 Lynch sounds so much how the 82 VCC came across at the recent Pomerol night in DC, up against so many younger wines.

[AKR]

Great line up sdr ! was the 2013 included just to calibrate, or was it a spare bottle or something?

[s*d*r]

was the 2013 included just to calibrate, or was it a spare bottle or something?

Not everyone in the group is an enthusiast of Bordeaux or has the wisdom to collect Lynch Bages. After this bottle we put him on probation .

[Blanquito]

was the 2013 included just to calibrate, or was it a spare bottle or something?

Not everyone in the group is an enthusiast of Bordeaux or has the wisdom to collect Lynch Bages. After this bottle we put him on probation .

I am hoping it wasn’t Jack!

[JimHow]

I think I told this story before, but bear with me if you've already heard it.
So I was in a wine shop in Falmouth, Maine, a day or two before Christmas, it was before the creation of BWE, I'm guessing 1998 or 1999, probably 1999. (BWE was formed in February 2000.) The guy had a bunch of 1989 and 1990 Lynch Bages in stock, I bought a bunch. by that point I think it was going for $75 per bottle. I remember talking with the owner, he agreed, the '89 had it all over the '90. I was about five years removed from politics at that point. It was late afternoon. And then....
"Hi Jim!"
I turn around.
It's Olympia Snow.
She and Jock (her husband, former Maine Republican Governor John McKernan) had recently moved from nearby Auburn to Falmouth with the rest of the mucky-mucks.
Anyway... Senator Olympia Snow comes up to little old ME, a country lawyer from Lewiston, Maine.
we chit chat, and she asks ME for advice on a holiday wine.
$75 for a 1989 Lynch back in 1999, even for a United States Senator, is a bit pricey.
But Senator Snow bought a bottle of 1989 Chateau Lynch Bages that day, based on MY advice.
I have no idea how it performed at their Greek Christmas family setting, but I'm guessing it was ok.
Olympia and I always got along... she a Republican, me a Dem. So sad we can't all just be citizens and accept democratic results. It really used to be a lot more fun, sometimes we won, sometimes the other side won, it's ok, in the end, it balances out. Now, we have one party that refuses to play the game, refuses to be citizens, refuse to accept election results.
Ahh well. 1989 Lynch Bages... The journey continues.

[AKR]

Look at how out of control inflation is! $75 for a Lynch Bages in 1999 and only a generation later its $400 now.

[Racer Chris]

Good story Jim!

[Claudius2]

Guys
I did not buy the 2016 Lynch Bages but I did buy quite a few others from this vintage. I’d suggest that this wine should be forgotten about for some years.

The lesser wines like AC Medocs, a few Haut Medocs and CB’s that I’ve tried are tight and showing structure without much balance and I have chucked them back in storage.

The 14’s and particularly 15’s are more open now though are still young. But in my case I’m forgetting anything at their age. Of the younger vintages, 2011, 2012 and 2013 are okay to drink now I think but none are too vintages in any case.

I bid on a lot of 1989 Lynch Bages at auction last Sunday and I’m now kicking myself for not buying it. Can anyone say what a fair price would be?

Cheers
Mark

[JimHow]

Like an idiot I paid about $410 per bottle for three bottles at an auction earlier this year Claudius.
If you get it for $350 these days you are doing good.

[JimHow]

Wow, wine searcher has the average price of 1989 Lynch Bages coming in at $481, that's crazy, yo.

[AKR]

What hath Powell wrought?

[JimHow]

Will there be a correlation between the price of '89 Lynch and whether the GOP will take over Congress in the 2022 midterms?

[Gerry M.]

Wow, wine searcher has the average price of 1989 Lynch Bages coming in at $481, that's crazy, yo.

Wow!!!

[DavidG]

Ahh, 1989 Lynch Bages and politics. As good a match as Whoopie Pie?

[JimHow]

I truly believe, all bullshit aside, BWE has helped move the market on ‘89 Lynch pricing. We are victims of our own success. What a glorious 21+ year relationship, BWE and ‘89 Lynch!

[marcs]

So I tried 2016 Pichon Baron almost two years ago and had my own experience with Not Liking the Sainted 2016 Vintage. Here is my previously posted TN on the 2016 PB, also a wine reviewed with messianic enthusiasm by Levenberg, Leve, Neal Martin, etc. etc. etc. Possibly I just hit it at a bad time or had inflated expectations, but note the way I describe it as a superficially "very good" wine but one that did not actually bring joy or create a "wow!" feeling when I tried it -- something that I have experienced several times with your new-model Bordeaux.

_______________________
2016 Pichon Baron -- now here was a wine where I came in with VERY high expectations. Because of the rep of the producer and vintage and universal raves by the likes of our own Blanquito, I went long -- very long -- on this new release. In fact this was probably my biggest investment in a single expensive wine EVER, certainly a new release before ever tasting it. I bought ten bottles total and burned this one to taste it in its youth. Now, in general high expectations set you up for disappointment so this may have contributed to my experience -- I was expecting to be blown away and in fact to recall the formative wine experiences I had many years ago tasting the 2000 Pichon Baron young, which was one among maybe half a dozen experiences that set me on the road to my current state of extreme wine fanaticism. But of course such experiences cannot be scheduled or predicted.

Anyway, this wine gave an impression of extreme smoothness and polish combined with a very dark fruited and almost heavy quality. I won't call that dark-fruited quality "pruney", because it wasn't pruney, but the very fact that the word came to my mind, if only to be rejected, is not a good sign. It was so polished and smooth that I couldn't call the weight or texture heavy, because that would have meant it had a hair out of place and it didn't really have a hair out of place, but it did sort of settle on your mouth in a way that was vaguely reminiscent of being heavy in the same way the almost excessively dark fruit was vaguely reminiscent of being pruney while not actually being so. Perhaps the most disappointing part was the finish, which I found rather sour, not in a bitter or biting kind of way at all, but just in an oppressive "I am not fun" kind of way. That was the big problem with the wine. It definitely wasn't a bad wine, in fact it was a very good wine in the sense that the entire texture and character of the wine screamed I AM A VERY GOOD HIGH END WINE, but it lacked joy, fun, lift, and pizzazz. It especially lacked one kind of joy I was looking for, namely that drinking it did not lead me to be joyful that I owned nine more bottles of it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not unhappy that I own them, this is a very young wine yet, this was obviously infanticide, and it is clearly set for a very long and rewarding aging process, so I'm curious to see how it turns out. But I am not JOYFUL that I own them and that's a disappointment.

You are drinking at the worst possible time Marc. The 2016s are shut down hard now. They were magnificent in 2018. They are now in a deep slumber. It is ridiculous to jump to wild conclusions on this basis. Just nuts. What a waste. The 1996s we had last night have only just arrived in their drinking windows.

I had this in like April 2020, just a few short months after the critical raves for the wine that you were quoting, and at most a year after it reached the US commercially in bottle. That is not typically a shut down period, although there is of course some risk always with a young Bordeaux.

Also, I put a lot of effort into my tasting notes. If you are going to respond to them, please read them instead of just grasping impatiently for the first excuse to dismiss them. If you read the note, it isn’t really describing a shut down wine (although I acknowledge several times that it might improve significantly with age). It describes a very smooth, slick wine that has deep, heavy fruit but nevertheless lacks a certain joy, lightness, and interest for me. This goes to the change in winemaking in Bordeaux which in my very limited experience (much more limited than yours!) seems to be producing wines that are much more polished and drinkable early but not necessarily better. I would be glad to see you engage on that, even vociferously disagreee with it, based on your experience which as I said is much more extensive than mine. I don’t drink a ton of young Bordeaux and have stopped purchasing new vintages

[Chateau Vin]

I truly believe, all bullshit aside, BWE has helped move the market on ‘89 Lynch pricing. We are victims of our own success. What a glorious 21+ year relationship, BWE and ‘89 Lynch!

Some of you might have seen it, but I stumbled across this the other day...

Video starting at 7 1/2 min mark is interesting...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn0567JzW5E

I am just holding on to my lone bottle of 89 Lynch...

[JimHow]

“The 1989 for me was perfection, it was truly incredible.”
— Jean Michel Cazes

Oui oui!

[Musigny 151]

I think many Bordeaux are made like painting “Starry Night” by the numbers. The recipe has been out there for years, and your first goal is to make a good, correct wine. In these days of global warming, the winemaking can be formulaic and the wines have lost their souls. This was exactly the way the BD described his encounter with the 2016 Lynch; it is prescription for winemaking that I personally loathe. Obviously a gross generalization but those making these wine outnumber the others by a large percentage.

I just reviewed the inventory still in the UK awaiting shipment. I have become boring. Five wineries were prominent; old DDC, Magdelaine, VCC, Haut Bailly and Cheval Blanc. This is after years of experimenting what I drink, I go for wines with character, excitement and a little austerity. Too few modern wines have that; and I have said before, we may be the last generation exposed to these older artisan wines. Global warming, the changing of ripeness and all the aids of modern winemaking may put an end to this.

[Blanquito]

I think many Bordeaux are made like painting “Starry Night” by the numbers. The recipe has been out there for years, and your first goal is to make a good, correct wine. In these days of global warming, the winemaking can be formulaic and the wines have lost their souls. This was exactly the way the BD described his encounter with the 2016 Lynch; it is prescription for winemaking that I personally loathe. Obviously a gross generalization but those making these wine outnumber the others by a large percentage.

I just reviewed the inventory still in the UK awaiting shipment. I have become boring. Five wineries were prominent; old DDC, Magdelaine, VCC, Haut Bailly and Cheval Blanc. This is after years of experimenting what I drink, I go for wines with character, excitement and a little austerity. Too few modern wines have that; and I have said before, we may be the last generation exposed to these older artisan wines. Global warming, the changing of ripeness and all the aids of modern winemaking may put an end to this.

Great selection, but nothing from the Medoc!

[Musigny 151]

True. I have a six pack of Pichon Lalande and Issan in half bottles.