Winemaker Notes
Blend: 87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
An impressive wine from the Barton family, this is poised and classic. Its pure black-currant aroma and balance of spice and black-fruit flavors are fully integrated. This ripe mostly Cabernet Sauvignon wine is beautifully .
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Decanter
With vivid - and subtle - notes of cassis, iris, violet and seashell minerality, this seamless wine impresses in 2023. Prominent tannins (it is, after all, dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon), show refinement with much palate depth and classy juiciness leading to a long finish that denotes both lightness and depth. A quintessential St-Julien. Ageing in 60% new oak will ensure a long-lasting wine that would be fine upon release but will benefit from a decade of ageing in your cellar.
Barrel Sample: 96 -
Jeb Dunnuck
Cassis, blackcurrants, graphite, tobacco, and a hint of crushed stone all emerge from the 2023 Château Léoville Barton, a more Cabernet Sauvignon-dominated effort that spent 18 months in 60% new French oak barrels. A final blend of 87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot, and 3% Cabernet Franc, it's medium to full-bodied and stays tight, compact, and straight on the palate, with a classic Léoville Barton style.
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James Suckling
A classy Leoville-Barton. Aromas of raspberries, currants, lavender and a hint of cedar. Medium-bodied, showing very fine tannins that are integrated and polished, with brightness and precision. Very attractive.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2023 Léoville Barton is showing beautifully, wafting from the glass with aromas of cassis, pencil shavings, burning embers and a discreet touch of new oak. Medium- to full-bodied, supple and layered, it's deep, dense and classically structured, with ripe tannins, excellent purity of fruit and a penetrating finish. It's a blend of 87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot and 3% Cabernet Franc that weighs in at 13% alcohol.
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Vinous
The 2023 Léoville-Barton marries the classicism the château is so well-known for with an extra kick of textural intensity from the heat of the year. It’s powerful, dark and serious, with compelling notes of black cherry, lavender, spice and blackberry. This is an especially dense, somber Léoville-Barton endowed with tremendous presence. The blend is 87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot and 3% Cabernet Franc, the first time Franc has appeared in the blend. This will need time to soften, as the tannins are imposing. Tasted two times. –Antonio Galloni
Barrel Sample: 93-95 -
Wine Spectator
This red’s sappy intensity belies the overall modesty of the vintage, offering an enticing wave of kirsch, plum compote and blackberry reduction that melds with melted black licorice and roasted apple wood. Youthfully grippy, but a velvety accent emerges on the ink-stained, lingering finish. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
Of all the Léovilles, Château Léoville Barton has been the most consistent standout through the years. The 2023 vintage sails forward with outstanding ripe fruit, supported by just enough barrel influence to provide structure without overshadowing its purity. The wine is confident, focused, and built for the long haul. Pair it with a perfectly oven-roasted porchetta seasoned generously with fennel seed, rosemary, garlic, black pepper, and a hint of chili flake, where the crackling skin and aromatic herbs amplify the wine’s depth and classical Saint-Julien authority. (Tasted: January 22, 2026, San Francisco, CA)
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.