Chateau Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, Pauillac, 1981

Château Pichon Longueville

Notes of lavender and melted licorice emerge along with the distinctive tapenade aromas interwoven with creme de cassis, espresso roast, and cedar. Perfect drinking now for lovers of fine, mature Bordeaux. Extraordinary purity and a tremendous texture.

France

Bordeaux

Refined, elegant, mature

Red

13.5

75.0

Cabernet Sauvignon 45%, Merlot 35%, Cabernet Franc 12%, Petit Verdot 8%

Robert M. Parker, Jr.
The Wine Advocate

"This has always been one of the sexiest, most delicious wines from the 1981 vintage. It still possesses a dark ruby/purple color. While the 1981 is less powerful than the 1982 and 1983, it reveals copious quantities of sweet black currant fruit, good flesh for the vintage, and a pure, nicely-textured and balanced style."

92/100 John Gilman
"The 1981 vintage of Pichon-Lalande continues to just cruise along in its plateau of maturity and is drinking beautifully, as it has been doing already for a couple of decades! At our vertical tasting this really showed well, offering up a middleweight and intensely flavored format and lovely complexity on both the nose and palate. The bouquet is a refined blend of cassis, black cherries, cigar smoke, a touch of toffee, gravelly soil tones, tobacco leaf, menthol and a deft touch of new wood. On the palate the wine is medium-full, pure and elegant, with good depth at the core, fine focus and grip, melted tannin and a long, complex and wide open finish. Just a lovely bottle of Pichon in its prime, but still with years and years of life ahead of it." (9/2019)