A second wine usually gets explained as whatever the estate could not put in the main bottle. The barrels that failed the cut, sold off under a cheaper label to recover something. It is a tidy story, it is mostly wrong, and believing it makes people buy badly in both directions. They skip second wines that are genuinely worth the money, and they overpay for grand vins in vintages where the gap between the two is narrow.
Selection at a serious Bordeaux property starts in the vineyard, long before anyone tastes a barrel. Vines planted in 2010 do not give the same fruit as vines planted in 1965. Young roots sit shallow. They find water easily in a wet year and panic in a dry one, and the fruit comes in lighter, quicker to ripen and quicker to fade. Nothing is wrong with it. It is a different raw material, and an estate that blends it into the grand vin waters down the thing people are paying for.
So the plots get separated. Certain parcels are assigned to the second label more or less permanently, because the soil there sits a little lower, drains a little slower, or carries younger plantings. Then the barrel decisions land on top: which lots go into new oak, which get a shorter stay in wood, which get bottled earlier so they are drinkable sooner. A second wine is the result of three deliberate choices, made about plot, vine age and barrel. The leftovers theory survives only because the word second sounds like a demotion.
Why Margaux tastes the way it does
The Medoc runs along the left bank of the Gironde on banks of gravel that the river dumped there over a very long time. Gravel does two useful things. It drains, so the vine is never sitting in wet ground and is pushed to send roots down rather than sideways. And it soaks up the day's heat and gives it back overnight, which is the only reason Cabernet Sauvignon, a late grape that sulks in the wrong place, manages to finish ripening this far north.
Margaux sits at the southern end of that run, and its gravel is shallower and finer than the deep banks further north. Less depth means less water in reserve, smaller berries, and wines that come out more perfumed and lighter in frame than Pauillac. That is where the standard line about Margaux being floral and delicate comes from. It is a fair description of the appellation average and a poor guide to any single property, because Margaux is a large commune and the ground changes considerably across it.
One estate, two labels
Lascombes is among the largest holdings in Margaux, a Second Growth in the 1855 ranking, and its vineyard is spread over enough different ground that the estate has real choice about what goes where. It also works with more Merlot than the Margaux stereotype allows for. The result is darker, rounder and denser than people expect from the appellation name. It is closer to a full glass of Bordeaux than a scented one, and if perfume is what you came for, this is the wrong address.
Chevalier de Lascombes is the second wine. Same estate, same cellar, same team, different plots, younger vines, and often less than half the price. It is not a failed attempt at the grand vin. It is assembled to be drinkable earlier, with softer tannin and more forward fruit, which is a genuinely useful property at a table rather than a compromise you tolerate.
What we have
Lascombes is the deepest single position we hold, across both labels and a long run of vintages, which is why this article exists at all. The whole thing sits in the Lascombes collection, sorted by price from the bottom, and that order happens to be a decent ladder to climb. The bottom rungs are recent Chevalier. The middle is the grand vin in vintages that have had time to settle. The top is old vintages and large formats, where you are buying scarcity rather than more flavour.
What we would pick, and why
For a table with eight or ten people and several bottles going round, Chevalier de Lascombes 2022 at around HK$258 is the sensible answer. It is young, it is soft enough to pour straight away, and at a banquet nobody is giving any single bottle forty minutes of attention. Buying grand vin for that job wastes most of what you paid for.
The pick we would actually put on our own table is Chateau Lascombes 2014 at around HK$498. This is the interesting rung. It is the grand vin, it has had a decade in bottle, and the tannin has stopped being a wall and started being structure. Older is not automatically better, but there is a window where a Left Bank Cabernet blend stops tasting like a promise and starts tasting like a wine, and this one is in it.
If the bottle is a gift, or is going to sit for a few more years, Chateau Lascombes 2015 at around HK$638 is the stronger vintage and the better-known one. The name on the label carries weight in Hong Kong in a way that matters when a bottle is being handed over rather than drunk. That is a real reason to pay more. It is not a flavour reason, and it is worth being honest with yourself about which one applies.
There is also a middle path we like: Chevalier de Lascombes 2015 at around HK$298, the second wine from a strong year with ten years behind it. It shows what the second label does when the vintage does the heavy lifting.
Where paying more stops buying flavour
Two places. The first is format. A Lascombes 2016 magnum at around HK$1,480 costs meaningfully more per bottle than two 75cl of the same wine. Magnums do age more slowly, which is real, but for a wine being opened this year you are paying for the object on the table. Sometimes that is exactly what you want. Just know that is the purchase.
The second is age. Our older vintages price on how few remain, not on how much better they taste. A twenty-year-old bottle is a different experience, and past a point it is a narrower one: less fruit, more savoury, a shorter window once opened. If you have not drunk much aged Bordeaux, start in the middle of the list rather than the top of it.
Who should skip this producer entirely: anyone who wants the light, high-toned, floral side of Margaux. Lascombes is not that wine and will read as heavy to you. And anyone storing bottles in a Hong Kong flat without a cabinet should buy what is ready to drink now rather than something to keep. Summer heat in an unconditioned cupboard undoes years of good cellaring in a single season, and the wines that survive that treatment least gracefully are the expensive ones.