Behind the headlines: new owners Château Lascombes

Any time an 1855 estate changes hands it’s a big deal – and even more so when you head up towards the top levels of the classification.

So the news that Lawrence Wine Estates has bought Château Lascombes from previous owners Mutuelle d’Assurance du Corps de Santé Français (MACSF, due to continue as minority partners) has created headlines world over, and plenty of nervous anticipation within Bordeaux, as is always the case when these prized estates move out of French hands.

With just 14 properties in the 1855  2nd Growth category, these are châteaux that don’t come onto the market very often – the last time was in fact Lascombes itself, when in 2011 Colony Capital sold it to MACSF. Beyond that, you have to look to 2006 when Château Pichon Comtesse was purchased by Roederer Estates, the same year that Château Montrose was bought by Martin and Olivier Bouygues. The exact price hasn’t been revealed, but it is extremely unlikely that it was anything less than €350 million (we do know that its last sale was for €200 million).

This is Lawrence Wine Estates’ – headed up by billionaire businessman Gaylon Lawrence, on the left here alongside CEO Carlton McCoy – first acquisition in Europe, and sees Lascombes joining a portfolio which includes Heitz Cellar, Burgess, Ink Grade, and Stony Hill Vineyard. I met up with Carlton in Napa this week, to hear about their plans for the property.

Owner Gaylon Lawrence and CEO Carlton McCoy (photo Carlton McCoy)

To be honest, Carlton was somebody who I had wanted to meet for a long time, and our lunch, at Angele restaurant in Napa, underlined in my mind this is brilliant news for Lascombes. Carlton has been a Master Somm since he was 28 years old, just the second African American to earn this title, and plays an important role in The Roots Fund that has inspired our efforts with the Mentor Week in Bordeaux. He is also somebody who thinks creatively and yet with great attention to detail, and is a true wine and food lover (I learnt that he collects 19th century cookbooks among other things, as he started his career at the Culinary Institute of America, where he became known for recreating menus of the French greats such as Escoffier and Carême, just as most of his fellow students were perfecting molecular cuisine).

He has worked at legendary places such as Thomas Keller’s Per Se, Marcus Samuelsson’s Aquavit, Tom Colicchio’s Craft Steak in New York and most recently as Wine Director at The Little Nell in Aspen for over a decade before being named President and CEO of Heitz Cellar in December 2018. It means he brings a wealth of experience over to Margaux, although he has underlined that the current winemaking team, headed up by Delphine Barboux, will remain in place.

‘That doesn’t mean we don’t fully intend to beef up the team alongside Delphine,’ he immediately adds, ‘bringing in support and widening out the expertise, to ensure that we have the right people in place to deliver our ambitions’. Dominique Befve, the longtime director who has stayed over the past two sets of owners, will be retiring from the role.

Beyond the prestige, however, there’s a serious job waiting for Lawrence Wine Estates. The former owners had been a discreet presence for 11 years, before which Lascombes was owned by American investment group Colony Capital, who themselves had bought the property in 2001 – and it’s hard to see how holding an estate of this size and complexity for 10 years at a time is enough to truly impact quality. You have to really look back to the era under American Alexis Lichine to find Lascombes standing among the most prestigious names in the region – but unquestionably the potential is vast, as you can see in vintages such as the 2016 and 2019.

This is the largest estate in Margaux at 120 hectares (together with a further 10ha in AOC Haut-Médoc), with plots all over the appellation that range in size from 0.5ha to 3 ha, across pretty much every terroir type that you can find in this large and varied AOC.

As such, it’s the kind of vineyard that needs careful viticultural attention-to-detail, as each soil type and grape variety reacts so differently according to the vintage – a challenge faced by similarly disparate 1855 classified properties in Margaux like Prieuré Lichine – and so needs an extremely strong team in vineyard management, and it is in the vineyard that the new team will be focusing their initial attention. A strong signal for this is that they have already begun working with terroir specialist Xavier Choné to carry out the detailed plot by plot soil studies.