"Pensées de Lafleur is not a second wine, as it comes from a single, rather oddly shaped, 0.69-hectare block of clay in the middle of the Lafleur vineyard. Composed of 52% Merlot and 48% Cabernet Franc, the 2017 Pensées de Lafleur is medium to deep garnet-purple in color and comes bounding out of the glass with gorgeous crushed black and red cherries notes, yeast extract, lilacs and rose hips with touches of cinnamon stick and tilled soil. The palate is medium-bodied, elegant, very fine and very fresh with a long, mineral-laced finish.
In 2017, it was pretty much business as usual for Château Lafleur since they were very fortunate not to receive any damage from the frosts. This said, like others on the Pomerol plateau, they did somewhat make their own luck. “We used the candles (buckets of paraffin), 1,500 of these to protect Lafleur,” cellar master Omri Ram informed me. “Along with the wind turbine at Pétrus,” he smiled, referring to the benefit of having Pétrus as a neighbour. This year, Lafleur is taking no chances and they have purchased their own wind machine for frost protection.
So, quantities were stable for Lafleur in 2017, and they enjoyed yields similar to their 2015 and 2016 crops. “A tad less wine than in 2015, a tad more wine than in 2016,” Omri commented. “The berry size in 2017 was tiny—like in 2015.” As readers will ascertain from my scores, Lafleur is one of the few properties that did not miss a beat in 2017, producing a truly extraordinary effort that is stylistically very different from their 2015, but potentially its equal in terms of quality.
At their Grand Village vineyard in Fronsac it was a different story, having been hit by about 50% frost losses there. “We saw that some vines that didn’t look damaged were actually shut down,” said Omri, referring to the difficulty in ascertaining exactly which vines were damaged and which weren’t. “So, we just forgot about 2017 in all the places that were touched by frost and decided to prune back to 87% loss in order to preserve the bud wood for 2018.”

90-92 points, Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW