Winemaker Notes
#1 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2019Intense ruby color, the nose reveals vivid notes of black fruits (black cherry, blackcurrant, blueberry) with a touch of ink. The mouth is ample, powerful and you feel the freshness of the red fruits. The tannins are delicate with a long finish.
Blend: 86% Cabernet Sauvignon, 14% Merlot
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Terrific intensity of dark berries, almost peppery blackcurrants and violets with attractive and integrated, spicy oak and an earthy edge. The palate has a super powerful and long, linear core with plenty of fruit flesh strapped in tight for a long and thrilling ride into the finish. A blend of 86 per cent cabernet and 14 per cent merlot. Try from 2024.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
A brilliant young wine, the 2016 Léoville Barton unwinds in the glass with aromas of cassis, dark berries and cigar box mingled with subtle hints of loamy soil. Medium to full-bodied, deep and concentrated, it's seamless and exquisitely balanced, with beautifully refined tannins, bright acids and a long, penetrating finish. Its structural refinement is such that it's far from forbidding to open right now, yet patience will be richly rewarded.
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Wine Spectator
This is so vivid as it brims with pastis-soaked plum, blackberry, black currant and blueberry paste flavors, all carried by a perfectly integrated brambly spine. Tar and ganache notes give the finish an extra kick while everything stays within the mouthwatering roasted apple wood frame. Both regal and rambunctious, this is St.-Julien to a T. Best from 2025 through 2040.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Deep purple-colored and a classic Saint-Julien with its pure crème de cassis, graphite, liquid rock, and essence of lead pencil shavings, the 2016 Château Léoville Barton is full-bodied, concentrated, and backward, with bright acidity and ripe yet certainly present and building tannins. This old-school, classic Léoville Barton has a fine thread of acidity keeping the wine focused and fresh. It’s a beauty, but mostly potential at this point, although it does have beautiful fruit. Savvy readers will hide bottles at the back of their cellar, and I wouldn’t start to think about opening bottles for a least a decade. It’s going to be incredibly long-lived. The blend of the 2016 is 86% Cabernet Sauvignon and 14% Merlot, brought up in 60% new French oak.
Rating: 96+ -
Wine Enthusiast
The Barton family’s flagship wine benefits hugely from the age of the vines. This wine is ripe and concentrated, rich in tannins but with the wonderful black fruits that can be conjured from this vineyard. It will age well and is likely to be ready to drink from 2026.
Cellar Selection -
Decanter
This vintage is dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon, making it comparable to some top Pauillacs. The Barton family has owned these vineyards for centuries and always makes very fine claret, but this is exceptional. Opulent and vibrant nose, crammed with blackcurrant. Depth, grip and concentration, but balanced and stylish too, with notable freshness. For the long haul. Drinking Window 2024 - 2045
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Connoisseurs' Guide
Effusively fruity and fresh on the nose and very well-concentrated if showing a bit of youthful tightness on the palate, this wine starts out with a real sense of promise only partially kept in its slightly taut, not-fully-developed flavors. It in some ways recalls the reticence of the wine from its slightly more northerly-sited neighbor, Château Leoville-Poyferré, but it is slightly deeper with more fruit consequence and is the one we would more readily choose to age.
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
An icon of balance and tradition, St. Julien boasts the highest proportion of classed growths in the Médoc. What it lacks in any first growths, it makes up in the rest: five amazing second growth chateaux, two superb third growths and four well-reputed fourth growths. While the actual class rankings set in 1855 (first, second, and so on the fifth) today do not necessarily indicate a score of quality, the classification system is important to understand in the context of Bordeaux history. Today rivalry among the classed chateaux only serves to elevate the appellation overall.
One of its best historically, the estate of Leoville, was the largest in the Médoc in the 18th century, before it was divided into the three second growths known today as Chateau Léoville-Las-Cases, Léoville-Poyferré and Léoville-Barton. Located in the north section, these are stone’s throw from Chateau Latour in Pauillac and share much in common with that well-esteemed estate.
The relatively homogeneous gravelly and rocky top soil on top of clay-limestone subsoil is broken only by a narrow strip of bank on either side of the “jalle,” or stream, that bisects the zone and flows into the Gironde.
St. Julien wines are for those wanting subtlety, balance and consistency in their Bordeaux. Rewarding and persistent, the best among these Bordeaux Blends are full of blueberry, blackberry, cassis, plum, tobacco and licorice. They are intense and complex and finish with fine, velvety tannins.