Chateau Leoville Las Cases 2eme Cru Classe, Saint-Julien 2008

The 2008 Léoville Las Cases has a backward, broody, earthy bouquet with intense tobacco and graphite aromas, more like a Pauillac than a Saint Julien, no surprise given that it lies on the border. The palate is very impressive: layers of tobacco-tinged black fruit, sea salt and graphite. This is very precise and harmonious with a persistent and multi-layered finish that leaves you mightily impressed. (Tasted at BI Wine & Spirit’s annual 10-Year On tasting.)

The 2008 Léoville Las Cases has a backward, broody, earthy bouquet with intense tobacco and graphite aromas, more like a Pauillac than a Saint Julien, no surprise given that it lies on the border. The palate is very impressive: layers of tobacco-tinged black fruit, sea salt and graphite. This is very precise and harmonious with a persistent and multi-layered finish that leaves you mightily impressed.

Super racy and balanced. Masses of licorice and currants, intense aromas. Full and very silky with an intensity of fruit. Reminds me of the 1996. Best after 2015.

A classic style of Las Cases that is somewhat masculine for the vintage, tannic and backward, and less formidably concentrated than the 2009 or 2010, the 2008 needs 7-8 years of cellaring. Dense purple, the aromatics are closed, but with coaxing and aggressive swirling, notes of crushed rock, black currants and some forest floor notes emerge. Impressively built, medium to full-bodied, layered and stunningly concentrated, this is a sleeper vintage for Leoville Las Cases that should improve considerably, given how closed it was the day I tasted it. It is another 30+ year wine from proprietor Jean-Hubert Delon.

Full ruby-red. Deep, mineral-driven aromas of cassis, camphor, peat and spicy oak. Large-scaled and deep; at once powerful and seamless, with impressively concentrated, sharply delineated black fruit and mineral flavors. Seriously structured wine but at the same time quite suave. The rising, very long finish stains the palate with black fruits.

(78% cabernet sauvignon, 12% cabernet franc and 10% merlot; includes 10% press wine; 13.4% alcohol; 65% new oak; from a yield of 37.9 hectoliters per hectare) Full, deep ruby-red. Beautiful nose redolent of violet, blackcurrant and minerals. Balanced and pure on entry, with almost sweet ripe red cherry and marzipan flavors, this is wonderfully suave and seamless, but with great purity and precision of flavor and terrific inner-palate perfume and lift. With a touch more length, it may well have been the wine of the vintage.