Chateau Leoville Barton 6-Pack OWC 2018
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Wine
Spectator -
Wine
Enthusiast -
Jeb
Dunnuck -
James
Suckling -
Robert
Parker - Decanter
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
A stunner, showing a great degree of purity, with long flavors of cassis, plum and blackberry preserves, seamlessly integrated with the graphite structure. A very vivid, defined, precise wine.
Barrel Sample: 96-99 -
Wine Enthusiast
This wine is well integrated in fine tannins and beautiful black fruits that show great promise for aging. It has a timeless, classic character that has all the freshness of the vintage, as well as the elegant personality of the fine terroir.
Barrel Sample:95-97 -
Jeb Dunnuck
I loved the 2018 Léoville-Barton. It’s a classic, structured, backward wine based on 82% Cabernet Sauvignon and 18% Merlot that’s still resting in 60% new French oak. While never the most showy or opulent, this team always fashions a fresh, focused, incredibly age-worthy wine, and the 2018 follows suit, revealing a vivid purple color, notes of crème de cassis, crushed violets, salty minerality, and lead pencil shaving-like aromas and flavors. Medium to full-bodied, concentrated, and incredibly elegant on the palate, it has building tannins, flawless balance, and integrated acidity, all making for a wine that’s going to demand upwards of a decade of bottle age yet keep for 40 years or more. The tannin quality here is exceptional and this is a wine you won’t regret having in the cellar. Barrel Sample: 95-97+?
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James Suckling
Sweet berries, blackberries, raspberries and violets follow through to a full body with extremely creamy, polished tannins that caress the palate. It’s really long and polished. Gorgeous finish. Drink after 2025.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Deep garnet-purple in color, the 2018 Léoville Barton simply sings of crushed black cherries, blackcurrant cordial and wild blueberries with touches of violets, dark chocolate, allspice and cardamom with a waft of stewed tea. Full-bodied, rich and decadently fruited in the mouth, the generous fruit has a solid structure of firm, ripe, grainy tannins and oodles of freshness, finishing long and layered.
Barrel Sample: 94-96 -
Decanter
They are just hitting it out of the park at Léoville Barton at the moment, keeping the relaxed and effortless feel of a great St-Julien but loading up on the complexity and concentration that lies behind it. You don't see all the mechanisms, but you know they are there. This is going to age exceptionally well, but there's a freshness and juiciness to the structure already that suggests it's going to be great fun to drink along the way. It has glass-staining extraction, with plenty of cassis, graphite and liquorice flavours - everything's turned up high. 60% new oak. Drinking Window 2027 - 2042. Barrel Sample: 96
In 1826, Hugh Barton, already proprietor of Chateau Langoa, purchased part of the big Leoville estate. His part then became known as Léoville Barton. Six generations of Bartons have since followed, and continued to preserve the quality of the wine, classified as a Second Growth in 1855.
In 1983, Anthony Barton, the present owner, was given the property by his uncle Ronald Barton who had himself inherited it in 1929. Anthony Barton's daughter Lilian Barton Sartorius now helps her father in managing the estate. Together, they maintain the traditional methods of winemaking, producing a typical Saint-Julien of elegance and distinction. The Château Léoville Barton is the property of the Barton’s family and Lilian Barton Sartorius manages it with her two children, Mélanie and Damien.
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.