1982 Château Pichon Longueville Baron, Pauillac

🍇 70% Cabernet Sauvignon – 25% Merlot – 5% Cabernet Franc (typical estate blend of the era)
📅 Vintage: 1982
📍 Bordeaux – Pauillac (Second Growth, 1855 Classification)
⭐ Robert Parker WA: 92 | Jancis Robinson JR: 17.5/20 | Vinous AG: 93
📦 75 cl
⏳ Maturity: Peak maturity – now to 2030+

📅 The Vintage – 1982: Bordeaux's Great Awakening

1982 is one of the most celebrated Bordeaux vintages of the 20th century—warm, dry, and ideal throughout the growing season. It marked a turning point: yielding ripe, supple wines with abundant fruit, soft tannins, and early charm, yet with the depth to age gracefully.

In Pauillac, the wines combined power, precision, and polish. For Pichon Baron, this vintage offered one of the best expressions of the old-school era, before modernization redefined the château’s style.

👃 Tasting Notes

👁 Appearance:

Garnet core, gently fading to a brick-orange rim. Clear and luminous, showing its age with graceful transparency.

👃 Nose:

A complex, tertiary bouquet: cassis, dried rose petals, pencil shavings, tobacco leaf, and cedar chest. Underneath, hints of iodine, mushroom, forest floor, and faint leather. A textbook mature Pauillac—elegant and stately.

👄 Palate:

Medium- to full-bodied with silky tannins, fine acidity, and a savory, layered texture. Flavors of dried blackcurrant, plum, graphite, and espresso unfold gently. The wine lingers with notes of herbs, old wood, and warm gravel, carried on a long, dry finish.

Structured yet yielding—a wine that rewards slow appreciation.

🍽️ Pairing:

Ideal with rack of lamb, roast duck, black truffle beef tenderloin, or aged cheeses such as Gruyère or Tomme de Brebis.

🏰 The Estate – Château Pichon Longueville Baron

A storied Second Growth of Pauillac, Pichon Baron sits adjacent to Château Latour, with similar deep gravel soils that yield wines of intensity and longevity. While its modern fame is often attributed to the estate’s post-1989 renaissance under AXA Millésimes, earlier vintages—like this 1982—show the innate nobility of its terroir.

Even before the technological upgrades and stylistic refinements of the late 20th century, Pichon Baron was crafting long-lived wines of great authenticity, marked by classic Pauillac firmness and aromatic complexity.

🏆 Awards & Critics

• Robert Parker – WA: 92/100
  "A rich, complex, well-balanced Pauillac with classic notes of blackcurrant, cedar, and spice. Maturing gracefully."

• Vinous – Antonio Galloni (AG): 93/100
  "Still vibrant. A wine of poise and structure, with the ripe fruit of the vintage and the restraint of the château’s older style."

• Jancis Robinson – JR: 17.5/20
  "Fully evolved. Very Pauillac—gravel, cedar, cassis. Classical and dry in the best way."

• Decanter (archival vertical):
  "An elegant expression of a powerhouse year. Smoky, savory, satisfying."

🖋️ Final Impressions – Signature & Emotion

The 1982 Pichon Baron is an echo of an earlier Pauillac—less polish, more authenticity. At over 40 years old, it has softened into a wine of noble stature: savory, earthy, and texturally refined. It may not be the flashiest bottle from the vintage, but it is among the most soulful—a true connoisseur’s wine.

Serve at 17°C, after a gentle 30-minute decant to let the wine unfurl its final chapters.