This is what the Medoc is all about. The freshness and delicacy of this wine in combination with its serious concentration and firm core are totally stunning. Time has already worked its magic and this is already delicious, but has decades in front of it. Drink or hold.

This wine is stunningly impressive but almost the opposite of the 2010 vintage. The year offered a warm, wet spring followed by a hot, dry summer and cool nights in September, giving a riper, more generous impression. A bit of smoke and spice on the initial attack with a ripe, plummy fruit character that is more black than red and a supple, dense richness on the palate that lingers sumptuously on the finish. This vintage will drink sooner than the 2010, yet should easily last as long. The finished wine is a blend of 82.5% Cabernet Sauvignon, 17% Merlot, and a half-percent of Petit Verdot. Picking began in mid-September for the Merlot and early October for the Cabernet, with 45% of the fruit going into the grand vin.

Aromatics curl right out of the glass, with restrained cassis interlaced with sweeter spiced berry fruits, crayon, eucalyptus, wet rocks, peony and classically chiselled tannins. Still young, but already totally delicious. Shows so clearly that balance and understatement don't get in the way of intensity and concentration. Unusual to taste Lafite in a lineup with the other wines of the appellation, making it exceptionally enjoyable to confirm the standout quality of the 2009 vintage here. On a different tier, and one with many decades ahead. 100% new oak.

Elegant, fresh, vibrant, lively, focused and refined, there is a beautiful purity to the fruit found here. Classic Pauillac here, but the wine is also lush and almost opulent in nature. Medium/full-bodied, with delicious array of red and black fruits, tobacco leaf, crushed stone, smoke and crisp red fruits in the end note, this beauty demands at least 15 more years to start delivering its true potential. The wine was made from blending 82.5% Cabernet Sauvignon, 17% Merlot and .5% Cabernet Franc. This is the highest percentage of Merlot in the blend since 1995. The wine reached 13% alcohol. Read more at:https://www.thewinecellarinsider.com/wine-tasting-note/?vintage=2009&wine=Chateau%20Lafite%20Rothschild

This is stunning for its ability to take massively endowed fig currant paste and crushed plum fruit flavors and harness them with ultrasuave freshly roasted espresso black tea and ganache notes. A seductive style long and velvety with the dense core of black fruit and smoldering iron just waiting and waiting. Best from 2020 through 2040. -JM

82.5% Cabernet Sauvignon 17% Merlot 0.5% Petit Verdot. This massive wine is very deep purple in color and impressively concentrated. Aromas of blackberry blueberry dark chocolate coffee and cherry. This is a very complete wine from start to finish with a great mouth feel. My notes read very complex elegant and restrained.

The deep garnet colored 2009 Lafite Rothschild bursts from the glass with red and black currant preserves, warm plums, mulberries and kirsch scents plus suggestions of sweaty leather, cigar box and menthol. Medium-bodied, elegant and firmly structured, it has wonderful freshness and a long earthy/meaty finish. - Lisa Perrotti-Brown

The 2009 Lafite-Rothschild is quite high-toned and expressive on the nose, perhaps the most ostentatious of the top flight 2009s with upfront black cherry and boysenberry fruit, lavish new oak and touches of violet. The palate is sleek and satin-like in feel with copious dark cherry and boysenberry fruit, fig and dates, almost honeyed in texture towards the precocious finish that has an opulent bent, almost hedonistic, unusual for this First Growth. But it is kinda irresistible. Tasted blind at Farr Vintners’ 2009 Bordeaux tasting. -- Neal Martin

(18.5/20) There was a massive contrast between this and the 2010, with the 2009 being very much more than one year more evolved. Definitely paler crimson than the 2010 and much more diffuse and integrated on the nose. Fresh, welcoming, positively prancing with vitality already. Very definitely Lafite with its ethereal character and neat, dry finish – and no more than medium bodied. Richer than most (thanks to the ripeness of the vintage presumably) but already so juicy and almost approachable (by the impatient).