Château Smith Haut-Lafitte 2024

Critic scores

• James Suckling97-98
• Vinous95-97
• Jeb Dunnuck93-95
• Decanter92

The 2024 vintage in Pessac-Léognan

Vintage benchmark: 87/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)

Vintage character: A rainy spring and a difficult flowering reduced the crop; the dry October saved fine, light, easy-drinking wines.

Overall reading of the year’s season across Pessac-Léognan. 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

“Notes of spice, oak, berries and gentian precede Smith Haut Lafitte 2024, a medium-bodied, firm and structured wine, with a pronounced tannic frame leading to a compact finish perfumed with gentian.” - Wine Advocate

Blend of the 2024 vintage

Figures from the 2024 sheet

• 36 hl/haYield
• 38 yrsVine age
• 120,000 bottlesProduction

Winemaking

as whole berries in small wooden vats at 28°C, extraction carried out by hand punching down.

Ageing

18 months in barrels (60% new barrels made in their own in-house cooperage), ageing on lees, a single racking, then ageing adjusted for each wine.

Terroir

The terroir has such a strong personality that it gave the region its name: "Les Graves". These graves are an accumulation of alluvial, sandy and stony deposits laid down on a Tertiary limestone subsoil by the turbulent rivers and glaciers of the early Quaternary era, subsequently reshaped into gravel rises by erosion. At Smith Haut Lafitte, the soil is made up of one of the rare Günzian gravel rises, thick and ochre in colour, a sign of its richness in iron oxide. This soil is of high quality for viticulture because it is at once free-draining, very poor and warm at the surface, while maintaining a degree of coolness and moisture at depth (clay or limestone).