Winemaker Notes
Black cherry nose, blackberry, touch of mocha. Powerful, fleshy, pure wine. Silky tannins and excellent length.
Blend: 84% Cabernet Sauvignon, 16% Merlot
The Barrel Sample for this wine is under 14% ABV.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
A very fine, rich and structured wine, this has all the hallmarks of one of the stars of this vintage. Packed with rounded tannins and rich black fruits, the wine is impressively concentrated in layers of blackberry flavors and lifted acidity. Expect this wine to age for many years.
Barrel Sample: 97-99 -
Jeb Dunnuck
The flagship 2019 Château Léoville Barton is brilliant, showing both the style of the estate as well as the vintage beautifully. It's never the biggest or richest wine, yet it has a classic, vibrant, structured style that ages beautifully. Pure cassis, black currants, scorched earth, new leather, and graphite are just some of its nuances, and it's medium to full-bodied, with a lively spine of acidity, beautiful overall balance, and a great finish. This textbook Léoville Barton demands a decade of bottle age and will keep for 30-40 years. Best after 2032.
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Decanter
Medium to full intensity in colour, this is glass-staining ruby and yet another hit from an estate that is making seriously great wine right now. Mint and eucalyptus are clear, tension and grip held through the palate. This has shoulders and swagger to the tannins, pure cassis hit of fruit and some lovely black chocolate and slate overtones along the way. Strays almost to Pauillac in terms of the weight of the tannins, but it's brilliant.
Barrel Sample: 96 -
James Suckling
Currants, sweet fruit and fresh flowers on the nose. Medium-to full-bodied with firm, silky tannins that are chewy and powerful. Long and muscular, yet in a toned and polished way.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Sporting a deep garnet-purple color, the 2019 Léoville Barton comes bounding out of the glass with exuberant notes of black raspberries, wild blueberries and crushed red and black currants plus hints of cedar chest, pencil lead, crushed rocks and red roses with a suggestion of Indian spices. The medium-bodied palate is chock-full of ripe, expressive black fruits and a very sophisticated, fine-grained texture, possessing plenty of freshness and finishing with impressive style and poise. While this beauty is just dripping with class, it's that flirtatious peek of perfume and fruitiness that really makes your heart pound. Love it!
Range: (94-96)+
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Wine Spectator
A strapping young wine, with well-layered blackberry paste, plum preserve and black currant coulis notes that show energy throughout, while plentiful bramble, tar and licorice root accents course underneath. Features a mouthwatering echo of apple wood at the very end, with a flash of violet adding a hint of purity. Built to last, too. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.
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.