The flagship 2023 Château Lynch-Bages is based on 71% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc, and the rest Petit Verdot, resting in 75% new French oak. One of the biggest, richest wines in the vintage, it’s deep purple-hued and offers up some classic Lynch richness in its smoky black fruits, smoked earth, graphite, and tobacco-driven aromatics. These carry to a full-bodied Pauillac with ample mid-palate depth, ripe, building tannins, and a great finish. While it's clearly in the lively, fresher style of the vintage, it's a serious, structured, incredibly impressive Pauillac with tons to love. It's not far off the style of the 2019.

he 2023 Lynch-Bages is a dark, brooding wine. In so many vintages, Lynch-Bages is a wine of sensuality, but in 2023, it is quite the powerhouse. Formidable tannins wrap around a core of black fruit, spice, menthol, licorice and gravel. This is a somber, introspective Lynch-Bages with a ton of Cabernet Sauvignon character. I can't wait to taste this from bottle. (AG)

Concentrated, intense and muscular, not a word that I have used very often in 2023 Bordeaux. You get a deeply-rooted tannic grip, with soot, squid ink, cassis, blackberry, bilberry, liqourice root, slate scrap, pummice stone and mint. Lynch Bages seems to be wrought from a different place than it was a decade ago, impressive, powerful Pauillac, with an eye on long ageing.