Winemaker Notes
Blend: 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 25% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot
This wine does not include the blanket 10% tariff imposed in April 2025. When the wines are shippable in fall of 2027, customers will have the option to pay any tariff in place at the time or to keep their wines stored in a temperature-controlled facility free of charge in France.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Focused, dense and creamy with berries and chocolate on the nose. It’s medium-bodied with fine tannins. Chalky, with crunchy berries and a flavorful finish.
Barrel Sample: 93-94 -
Decanter
Bright and alive in the mouth, juicy, succulent and ripe with cool blue fruit elements too. Cherry and strawberries mix with chalky, wet stones. Round and forward, this has a sense of fun and persistence. Feels well worked with enough ripeness and balancing tannins. Great stuff here. Chewy, concentrated and just fun. Good first and second wine here in 2024.
Barrel Sample: 92 -
Vinous
The 2024 Talbot is an attractive, understated Saint-Julien. Sweet pipe tobacco, cedar, mint, mocha, dried herbs and incense lend notable aromatic presence. The 2024 is pleasant but also a bit light texturally. Let's see what happens with élevage. –Antonio Galloni
Barrel Sample: 90-92
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.