Saint-Julien · vintage 2020
Why this vintage
- 95/100 from Wine Advocateand 5 other scores above 90/100.
- The 2020 vintage in Saint-JulienAn early, hot year, with a harvest under pressure: a dense, juicy classic, ripe without heaviness.
Critic scores
- Wine Advocate95
- Vinous95
- Decanter94
- Wine Enthusiast93
- Wine Spectator92
- James Suckling90
The 2020 vintage in Saint-Julien
Vintage benchmark: 94/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)
Vintage character: An early, hot year, with a harvest under pressure: a dense, juicy classic, ripe without heaviness.
Overall reading of the year’s season across Saint-Julien. An estate can depart from it sharply, in frost or hail years, where two neighbours did not make the same vintage. What this particular wine actually gave is on its technical sheet and in the scores above.
Tasting
This 2020 is a winemaker's vintage of contrasts, marked by the estate's smallest harvest in 30 years. So much freshness in the hottest vintage of modern history demonstrates the buffering power of our terroir. The precision of the fruit reveals itself with notes of morello cherry, blackcurrant and licorice. The taut tannic structure recalls the grandeur of 2010, with a mid-palate that is more velvety, more amiable. Of great classicism, it can nonetheless be enjoyed sooner without losing its remarkable ageing capacity. A finely chiseled wine, vibrant and of great purity.
Blend of the 2020 vintage
- 74 % Cabernet-sauvignon
- 24 % Merlot
- 2 % Petit verdot
Shares for this vintage, as recorded on the 2020 technical sheet. The vineyard itself is planted with 67 % cabernet sauvignon, 28 % merlot, 5 % petit verdot — a vintage blend departs from the area under vine as the year dictates.
Figures from the 2020 sheet
- 45 yrsVine age
- 150,000 bottlesProduction
Winemaking
Parcel and intra-parcel selection
102 temperature-controlled stainless steel vats for 103 vine parcels
Variable vat capacity: from 36 to 220 hl
Lots classified by grape variety, vine age, terroir and
grape ripeness
Vinification at 26-28°C for 18 to 25 days
Moderate daily pump-over, or rack-and-return, or punching down
Malolactic fermentation by co-inoculation
Ageing
Ageing for 21 months
50% new barrels
Fining with egg whites in barrel
Final blend before bottling
Terroir
Lying entirely within the commune of Saint-Julien, the vineyard of Château Lagrange covers 108 ha of red-grape vines in a single block planted on two gravel rises running north-south. The estate has a clay-limestone subsoil and a silica-gravel soil, in a temperate oceanic climate.
An offer on Château Lagrange 2020
Availability, allocations and terms: the Compagnie Médocaine will reply promptly. The estate and vintage are already filled in in the message.
Texts and documents 2020
The texts below copy in one click for your product sheets, catalogues and social channels. The printable sheet condenses the whole page onto a single A4 page.
Visuals
For this vintage, the media library contains: packshots, labels. High-definition packshots, labels, back labels and lifestyle photos are reserved for clients and partners, on the Compagnie Médocaine’s VinCod media library.
Sheet checked on September 21, 2026. Technical data: the estate’s VinCod sheets. Critic scores: sources cited above, with their date. Vintage benchmarks and character: Compagnie Médocaine’s own editorial read. Soils and relief, where shown: the Compagnie Médocaine’s parcel survey and the Mapbox/IGN terrain model.