Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts

Well, overall this wine was just OK. Effusive bouquet, it kind of reminds me of ground coffee, molasses and cork (not cork taint but cork) good color, good scale and weight. Texturally this has filled out and eased in and the mouthfeel here is very nice and the flavors are balanced. The wine is definitely open for biz, the tannin is mainly rounded off. My main issue with this one is the flavor. There's not a lot of sunshine/joy/love to this. The grapes taste like they were raised in boarding schools and then sent to military academy and never got a lot of unqualified parental love. There's some spiciness and as things evolved over three hours or so I got a little bit more sweetness out of this. But mainly it was very dark, maybe like 80 percent cocoa. So maybe this is one that needs decanting, not to soften structure but to allow some merrier flavors to shine through. Not a favorite at this point.

This is kind of sad to read. But the cork aromas make me think this was not a perfect bottle.

When I think about it, I did not sample Léoville Barton so often. I had the 1978, 1986, 2012 and 2014 I think. Pretty poor sample. I have some 2008 but did not opened a bottle yet.

It is not a flashy wine, this is for sure, a bit under the radar as we don't see that Chateau really often in tastings, even with the reasonable price, and second growth status. Wonder why?

Nic

I have an unopened case of the 2002 Leoville Barton.
I'm going to try to get six bottles of the 2014.

For sure Jim have a go at this. And Nick if there was something wrong with the wine it was not cork taint. Nor did it taste cooked or oxidized. It smelled and "felt" nice. And it had plenty of flavor, so it was not muted. I just felt like the flavors weren't pleasing to me this time. I'm not even sure if I've even had this wine before. I've owned these bottles since the year of release. Picked up a few on sale.

I think I had this wine with Marc at DC '16 and it was kind of overwhelmed by the other wines from that night.

AlohaArtakaHoundsong wrote:There's not a lot of sunshine/joy/love to this.

Could this be the house style? Stern, a little backwards, etc.? I don't drink enough of them to have a strong view on this, but this descriptor could apply to many of the bottles I've had from Leoville Barton or Leoville Las Cases for that matter.

It's funny, because St Estephe is supposed to be the tough, tannic, charmless commune, but I'm usually a big fan of the wines there (Montrose, Cos (pre-2000), Lafon Rochet, Sociando Mallet (just outside of the commune), Meyney (back in the day), Ormes de Pez, etc.).

This tasting note matches my experience of the wine, except I liked it and Aloha didn't. Yes it is a dark-fruited wine, and yes it lacks lavish fruit or bright "exuberant" fruit if that is what you are looking for. That is the vintage character of 2002. But I found the wine to have a certain meditative depth to it and an interesting complexity. I would call it subtle, understated, and complex with a sneaky depth of character to it.

I am with Marc on this. I drank through a case of halves. Prematurely of course. But I loved this wine's nervosity, tension, recalcitrance and somewhat Delphic personality. I have a case of bottles and look forward to reacquainting myself with this it in due course, but no hurry. It is not to everyone's liking. The 2001 is a very different, easier to get along with and much more accessible, while the 2004 (and 2008) combine the best of all worlds.

As an additional perspective, here's my note on this wine from January 2016:

2002 Château Léoville Barton
Still youthful, but structurally open and ready to play. Classy, fruity, high-class new oak, mocha, iodine, savory. Well balanced and more on the medium to light bodied side of the spectrum. Delicious and refined with enough character and ripeness to be fun, but this will better in another 5+ years for my tastes.

I knew I had tried this recently, but I couldn't recall exactly what my thoughts were. Sounds like it liked it. I have 5 more bottles, I will wait until 2020 before the next.