Chateau Leoville Barton 2eme Cru Classe, Saint-Julien 2003

A spectacular success, the opaque plum-colored 2003 Leoville Barton is still on the young side of its plateau of maturity. It exhibits a striking bouquet of forest floor and black currants as well as a full-bodied, exuberant, youthful style, an opaque plum/ruby color, a lot of complexity, and striking depth and richness. This is a profound, stunning effort from Anthony Barton and his team. Bravo! It should continue to provide immense pleasure for 20-30 years.

Currants and plums with mint on the nose follow through to a full body, with soft and velvety tannins and a new wood, ripe fruit aftertaste. Tight and firm, but wait until after 2012 to pull the cork. Find the wine

Excellent medium ruby color. Complex nose melds bright black fruits, bitter chocolate, minerals, leather and game. Wonderfully sweet and dense in the mouth, with pure, sharply delineated flavors of black cherry, lead pencil, bitter chocolate and minerals. At once layered and seamless, though showing a touch of youthful austerity. This revealed more inner-mouth vibrancy than the 2003 Langoa-Barton I tasted next to it. Very long, sweet finish features big but ripe tannins; the index of polyphenols was a very high 76 in 2003.