Winemaker Notes
Blend: 71% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Spearmint and blackcurrants on the nose with some gorgeous perfume too. Excellent intensity of blackcurrant juice, not fleshy, more linear and direct, the lightness of flavour balancing with fine, just gripping tannins that also offer touches of tobacco and toasted spice flavours. It's overall quite a delicate and well worked wine for the vintage, with gentle fruit persistence and a lifted finish. Will no doubt round out over ageing, giving more density to the really beautifully presented floral-touched bramble fruit. Elegance and class; promising indeed.
Barrel Sample: 93 -
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2021 Château Talbot is based on 71% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Merlot, and 5% Petit Verdot. It has lots to love and brings more density and depth than most in the vintage. Ripe red and black fruits, tobacco leaf, spicy oak, and a touch of chocolaty earth all emerge on the nose, and it's medium-bodied, with a rock-solid mid-palate, ripe tannins, and a great finish. It's impressive and well worth seeking out and buying, as you can drink bottle today or in 15+ years with no issues.
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Wine Spectator
Offers a solid core of crushed plum and black currant fruit, underscored by savory and tobacco accents and a light sanguine edge. Possesses just enough flesh to stave off the vintage's grainy side as a late iron note echoes. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot. Best from 2025 through 2035.
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.