2018 Château Léoville Poyferré
Community Tasting Note
englishman's claret wrote:
Saturday, February 25, 2023 - It’s important to give the 2018 Léoville Poyferré plenty of air if you’re tasting it now, because for the first 3 hours the fruit remains in its shell, leaving the nose to the devices of its oak and not showing a proper counterbalance to the alcohol. Yet at hours 3, 4, 5, and 16 the wine simply continues to unfurl and shows what it’s really made of - and what the future holds. Léoville Poyferré has captured the ripeness and luxury of the 2018 vintage while staying just on the right side of the line when it comes to ripeness, sporting an enveloping plummy, mixed berry nose, freshened by pencil shaving and petrichor, with a bit of dark chocolate eventually showing itself. The textures here are really voluptuous and they’re able to balance the 14.2% alcohol pretty well. A very fine vintage here, though admittedly there’s always going to be a little unpredictability with 2018 ABVs as these enter their 3rd-4th decade.
94-97
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Comment posted by Everything Ahead:
2/27/2023 8:16:00 AM - Thanks for checking in on this wine with the note. You had a very different experience than I did a while back (over a year ago I think). I found it very un-St Julien (even with lots of air time), but I tend not to be a big fan of the house style here so maybe that's my issue. I much (!) preferred Lagrange and Leoville Barton (which I adored in '18) over the Poyferre in this vintage. I will let the rest of my '18 Poyferres age though for 10 years or so and will hope for a bit more magic then. Cheers!