Pichon Baron

2019: Château Pichon Baron reveals a beautiful dark garnet colour with purple hues. The bouquet is precise and very intense, revealing a wide aromatic palette of ripe black fruits and spices. The body is fleshy, creamy, and powerful. The tannins are present and plentiful, without astringency, silky and sleek. It has a beautiful fleshy tension in the mouth, with a sunny and charming style. The finish is elegant, distinguished, with a bright fruitiness. A great wine for ageing as it develops a generous, rich, and elegant fullness.

Wine Advocate 97: Medium to deep garnet-purple in color, the 2015 Pichon-Longueville Baron is enticingly scented of chocolate-covered cherries, crushed red currants and mulberries with touches of baking spices, potpourri and bay leaves plus a hint of fallen leaves. Sumptuously elegant, refreshing and medium-bodied with gorgeous, expressive, perfumed red fruits and very fine, very firm tannins, it has a persistent, perfumed finish. Its remarkable intensity, freshness and very firm frame suggest a long-lived Pichon Baron, which should cellar gracefully for 30+ years.

James Suckling 95: Blackberries, sweet tobacco, incense and currants. Aromatic. Medium to full body and firm, sleek tannins. Racy and refined. Shows lovely balance and finesse. Pretty now, but needs another three or four years of bottle age. Try from 2023.

Vinous 97: The 2015 Pichon Baron offers a delectable mixture of black fruit, mint and violet on its precocious nose that blossoms in the glass. The palate is vibrant, concentrated, delineated and fresh from its sapid entry with immense weight on the finish. Yet this is so tensile that you barely notice the horsepower in this impressive Pauillac that will last years. The 2015 is one of the best from the estate in the 2010s.

Decanter 94: This is big, with well-worked tannins and real impact. It showcases an impressive architectural feel replete with backbone and power. A little burly at this early stage as you would expect, but it is certainly a wine to get carried away by, and it is beautiful to sit back and admire the way it takes on complexity and depth in the glass. 80% new oak.

Wine Advocate 97+: The 2019 Pichon-Longueville Baron will go down as one of this château's great wines of the modern era, along with 2016, 2010 and 1989. Unfurling in the glass with aromas of cassis and plums mingled with notions of cigar wrapper, sweet loamy soil and violets, it's full-bodied, velvety and layered, with superb concentration, lively acids and rich, powdery tannins. Perfumed and resonant, this is a profound young Pauillac that bears more of a resemblance to its neighbor Château Latour than to Pichon Lalande this year. Pichon Baron was one of the great deals of the en primeur campaign, and readers who purchased futures are to be congratulated on their foresight.

Wine Advocate 96-98: A brilliant achievement, the 2025 Pichon-Longueville Baron, a blend of 84% Cabernet Sauvignon and 15% Merlot (70% new oak), features a notably high proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon for a warm vintage, exceeding that of 2020 and 2022. It reveals a refined bouquet of dark wild berries, cassis, spice, lead pencil and licorice. Medium- to full-bodied, dense and concentrated, it’s built around a fleshy, finely structured core of fruit with a distinctly Cabernet-driven profile, combining freshness and tension with notable depth. It should age gracefully over the next two to three decades. - Yohan Castaing

James Suckling 96-97: A very structured red with intense tannins, finishing polished and refined. It's medium-to-full-bodied with super creamy tannins and a long finish. Granular tannins. - James Suckling

Vinous 95-97: The 2025 Pichon Baron was picked over 16 days between September 8 and 24 at just 24 hl/ha, matured in 70% new oak. Like the Les Griffons, it has a subtle estuarine/sea spray element that intertwines with the mélange of red and black fruit. The Merlot is actually more expressive than recent vintages. The palate is medium-bodied, with grainy tannins, lovely crispness and elegance, gaining depth as it moves into its final third. Slightly chalky tannins (a leitmotif of the vintage, especially in Pauillac), gentle grip, with an almost mellow finish, suggest that it might be earlier drinking than the 2019 or 2022. Superb. - Neal Martin

Decanter 97: Dark berry fruit aromas. Ripe and grippy, this takes hold straight away with upfront tannins making their mark, covering the mouth in a fine layer of chalkiness but with a cool, wet stone element too. So mineral, very transparent in terms of terroir expression. Lithe and focused, there’s tension as well as. You can feel the muscles of the Cabernet but there’s a slightly chew and juiciness behind the tannin wall. Very precise, with meticulous detail to the tannins, fruit, and cooling acidity. Sophisticated and very enjoyable, if more tense at this point than some others. Blueberry and plum and fresh mint. There’s a real delicacy, pixelated aspect to the overall expression – grand and majestic. Harvest started on 8 September. 3.72pH. - Georgina Hindle