2017 Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte Rouge Pessac Leognan Cru Classe Bordeaux 750 ml

Last fall in Bordeaux, we each had four glasses of Château Smith Haut Lafitte Rouge in front of us. The lineup included the monumental 2005 and 2012 vintages, but it was the 2017—with its classic structure and black-cherry and blackberry flavors corralled by rounded yet solid tannins—that stole the show.

With three 97-point scores, this wine has been praised by almost every major critic who’s tasted it. Wine Advocate adored its “fantastic core of densely packed red and black fruits,” and Vinous’ Antonio Galloni called it “flat-out gorgeous and very clearly one of the wines of the year.”

More than 600 years ago, the Du Boscq family homed in on a gravelly plateau that was known locally as “Lafitte,” but the estate has only truly realized its potential since Florence and Daniel Cathiard bought it in 1990. The two have poured time and money into the château, building a new winery and converting the farming to an exacting, organic-informed standard.

In the three decades since they bought Smith Haut Lafitte, the team has focused on individual terroirs and adopted so-called "bio-precision" in the vineyard, using satellites to monitor tiny details. This allows them to time their harvest on a row-by-row basis and sort the grapes multiple times—both in the vineyard and in the winery, where they use high-tech optical sorting technology to ensure that only perfect berries make it into their wines.

Smith Haut Lafitte has even joined First Growth Châteaux Lafite, Margaux, and Haut-Brion as the rare Bordeaux properties with on-site cooperages. It doesn’t get more hands-on than that, and the devotion to quality shines through in every sip.