2000 Château Léoville Barton
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Tasting notes
Château Léoville Barton has long been a favourite of Bordeaux lovers the world over as a model of traditional, expertly made Claret. With world-class quality in bottle, it's a wine that embodies all of the best characteristics that St. Julien has to offer. Mature parcels are incredibly rare and we're therefore thrilled to offer the fantastic 2000 vintage direct from the Château. With a tremendous capacity for aging, and relative affordability when compared to other iconic names from Bordeaux, Léoville Barton has always been "one of the best values in blue-chip, ageworthy Bordeaux," as the Wine Spectator notes. From a vintage that ranks as one of the very best Bordeaux vintages in recent times, the 2000 more than lives up to this statement. Rare and immaculate, this is a truly special parcel. These cases have never left the Chateau's cellars since bottling and are therefore in pristine condition - the provenance here simply could not be any better. With 20 years of maturity, the 2000 is showing excellently, with Robert Parker writing in 2010 that this is "a wonderful classic with five decades of longevity ahead of it.
Critic scores
Wine Spectator
Robert Parker
More reviews and scores
The 2000 Léoville-Barton has a juicy, ripe bouquet of macerated black cherries, incense, potpourri and veins of blue fruit. The palate is medium-bodied with fine-grained tannins, good density, nice structure and a sappy conclusion. This has opened up in recent years and displays a touch of ash toward the finish. Drinking perfectly now, it’s a decent Léoville-Barton that never quite achieves the heights of recent stellar vintages.
I found this to be one of the more backward wines of the 2000 vintage and gave it a window of maturity of 2015-2040 when I reviewed it in 2003. In my two recent tastings of it, I changed that window to 2018-2050, which probably says more than the following tasting note could say. This is a behemoth - dense, highly extracted, very tannic, broodingly backward, with a dense purple color and very little evolution since it was bottled 8 years ago. Wonderfully sweet cedar and fruitcake notes are intermixed with hints of creme de cassis, licorice, and earthy forest floor. It is full-bodied and tannic, with everything in place, but like so many wines that come from Léoville Barton, it makes a mockery of many modern-day consumers wanting a wine for immediate gratification. Those who bought it should continue to exercise patience and be proud to own a wonderful classic with five decades of longevity ahead of it.
About the producer
Ch. Léoville Barton is a Second Growth Saint-Julien estate, one of the three famous Léoville estates (along with Léoville Poyferré and Léoville Las Cases). Owned by the Barton family (along with Ch. Langoa Barton), it produces classically structured Claret that ages beautifully.