Chateau Laffitte Laujac Medoc

Laffitte Laujac is part of the vast Laujac estate in Bégadan, in the northern Médoc, well past the famous

communes of Pauillac and Saint-Estèphe, some 75 km north of the city of Bordeaux. It has belonged to

the Cruse family since 1852. Six generations have farmed here across two centuries. Bernard Cruse revived the vineyards after phylloxera, two world wars, and the devastating frosts of 1956 had reduced them to a handful of hectares, and in 2012 handed the estate to his daughter Vanessa Cruse and her husband René-Philippe Duboscq. The wine is a Cru Bourgeois, from the historic 1932 classification, and Cabernet Sauvignon leads the blend. The Cabernet grows on deep beds of Plio-Quaternary gravel, rounded stones washed down and sorted over the ages, while Merlot sits on the heavier tertiary clay limestone nearer the village. Gravel is the classic Médoc terroir for Cabernet, and its effects are all about warmth and drainage: the pale stones soak up the day’s heat and radiate it back at night, helping late ripening Cabernet finish in a cool maritime climate, while the sharply draining ground forces roots deep and keeps vigor in check, concentrating the fruit. The clay limestone parcels do the opposite, holding water and lending flesh and roundness through the Merlot. Wrapping it all is the moderating breath of the Gironde estuary and the Atlantic, which buffers extremes and stretches out the season. The result is a classically structured, restrained claret with notes of cassis and dark plum, cedar, tobacco, and graphite, with firm but fine grained tannins, fresh acidity, and moderate alcohol. This is Cabernet in its cool, gravel grown register: savory, structured, and built for the table and the cellar.