2008 Château Léoville Barton

Community Tasting Note

6 comments have been posted

• Comment posted by Ibetian:

  10/4/2013 1:19:00 PM - Leo B usually takes a long time to develop. Not surprising that the 2008 is not showing much yet.

• Comment posted by Jojala:

  10/5/2013 2:41:00 AM - ...I hope age does miracles. I tend to believe more in thinking that a good wine is always good, no matter it is opened. But perhaps this is oversimplification.

• Comment posted by Ibetian:

  10/5/2013 6:17:00 AM - It is certainly true that some wines show well from release and never shut down, for example the 2003 Leo B, but most Bordeaux especially Leo B usually drink fairly well on release and then shut down for some years; in especially structured vintages like 2000 or 2005 it might take 15 - 20+ years for the best wines to emerge from their shells. Your note might indeed be right on; this might just be a weak vintage for LB. but my guess is that it will be better in 5 years. No way of saying for sure.

• Comment posted by depechemoroder:

  10/12/2013 2:14:00 AM - Yes this definitely needs time. 2008 was a reasonably good vintage. Not a great one, but LB did rather well. I agree that a lot of left bank claret is interesting very young (although not my style to drink at all) and then goes through a 'teenage' phase where it is wild and unruly. 2008 was not a forward vintage like 2003 or even 2009, I suspect this won't be ready until at least 2018 and won't truly come into its own until 2020. I had a sample of this on release and it really did have that perfect combo of fruit, acidity, and tannin (if you ever have claret on release I highly recommend booking in with the dentist the following day!). I reckon you could keep this 30-40 years if you wanted.

• Comment posted by Bigblue:

  12/21/2013 9:34:00 PM - How long did it breath for?

• Comment posted by Jojala:

  12/28/2013 11:21:00 AM - Sorry cannot recall. It might be that it was pop & pour but drank over 2 days. No significant improvement.