Axel Heinz launches Merlot-only Lascombes

Winemaker Axel Heinz is producing a new Merlot-only 2022 La Cote at Château Lascombes that will be about twice as expensive to buy as the estate wine, writes Roger Morris. Should there be any surprise that the estate director who elevated Merlot-icon Masseto during his tenure at Ornellaia is now launching a Merlot varietal wine in his new position as head of Château Lascombes, the large second-growth in Margaux? Available later this spring, it is called La Côte Lascombes, and the 2022 vintage is going on the market, perhaps more surprisingly, at twice the price of the Château Lascombes grand vin (about US$200 versus $98) and will initially be available in more-limited quantities. The new Lascombes director, Axel Heinz, was lured away from Ornellaia in March 2023 to take over at Lascombes, less than a year after the venerable but perpetually under-performing property was purchased by the American billionaire Gaylon Lawrence in November 2022.

Shaking things up

“I didn’t come here to just make a Merlot,” Heinz recounted in a virtual interview as he prepared for the annual primeurs event, but admits that having 60-year-old Merlot vines planted on blue marl clay over limestone soil was an enticement. “The 2022 vintage was in barrels when I got here, and we quickly saw that some of the Merlot lots were spectacular,” he says. “But before we bottled it, we wanted to be sure we could replicate the same quality in 2023 and 2024.” Heinz admits that neither he nor Lawrence Wine Estates CEO Carlton McCoy were interested in taking the 120-hectare (297 acres) estate and just working harder at making it better, as recent attempts have done. “The idea was to add a new wine that would make a little more excitement, to add new life to an old, historic property,” he says. “We wanted shake things up a bit.” While some of the Merlot in La Côte would definitely have gone into the estate wines, as Heinz notes, he also wanted to reshape the estate wine into something stylistically different than it had been. “The new first wine comes from the core vineyards that were part of the estate in 1855” at the time of classification, he says, “which is mostly on gravel and is mostly Cabernet Sauvignon.” Lascombes will continue to produce its second wine, Chevalier de Lascombes, Heinz says. You can read the tasting notes of the wine's 2023 vintage from db Bordeaux correspondent Colin Hay, here. Unlike his predecessor at Ornellaia, Thomas Duroux, who now makes a “different expression,” Alter Ego, just down the road at Château Palmer, which isn’t considered a second wine either, Heinz points out that the new Lascombes Merlot is a varietal wine and not a different stylistic blend, as is Alter Ego.

No stranger

Of course, Heinz is no stranger to the Medoc, having studied oenology at the University of Bordeaux and then working at Château La Tour Carnet and other Bordeaux wineries before being hired as winemaker at Ornellaia in 2005 and moving up to estate director in 2015. Lascombes, which dates its history as an estate back to the 1600s, has undergone several attempts in recent years to make wine on a par with its official status, but to little avail. Various consultants have been brought in, including Michel Rolland, and Heinz says he will continue to work with one of Rolland’s assistants. In addition to the changes in its portfolio, I asked Heinz if he intends to employ the same type of the high-level, artistic promotions that had drawn so much to Ornellaia as a brand. Yes, he said, but noted they would be different and that they weren’t yet detailed. “The paradox is that although Lascombes is well-known, very few people know any detail other than the name,” he says. Heinz wants to give it added identity and dropped the hint that Lascombes will probably be joining the Medoc trend of having a white wine its portfolio, but no preparations have yet begun. “But the one thing the owners emphasise,” he says, “is that they don’t buy any wine property just to make average wine.”