Château Léoville-Barton: The Gentleman Of The Médoc
When I started in the wine industry too many years ago to mention, the countries and regions that produced the wines that I sold always felt a very long way away indeed. But now, with winemaking creeping ever northward these days, it is not unusual to stumble upon a vineyard while I am walking the dogs amid my beloved Cotswolds hills.
But even with the chance to visit those famous, storied regions remains a special pilgrimage, journeying to places where winemaking heritage can stretch back a millenia. There the wine culture seeps in to everything around you, from the blades of grass to the very stone of the buildings. These are the great cathedrals of wine, regions where tradition has been handed from one generation to the next, techniques honed and perfected, and the product of their labour comes to define the area. And few embody that quite as much as the Médoc.
The region stretches almost diagonally north-west from Bordeaux town itself, nestled against the banks of the Gironde estuary, an undulating plateaux covered in vines, scored through by streams nestling in shallow valleys, and dotted with the glittering Château the region is famed for.
And while vines have been planted here since Roman times its modern history started when the canny Dutch drained the marshland in the 17th century, revealing its true treasure: its soil. It is these deep, free-draining gravel and limestone soils anchored by clay beds, nurtured by the Gironde’s tempering influence and shielded from the Atlantic’s worst excesses by a vast pine forests to the west that create a magic you would not guess at looking at its unassuming landscape.
But that landscape belies the truly profound wines the Médoc is capable of. This is the French concept of terroir, a myriad of almost intangiable, microscopic factors that combine to make a region special. Many of those the human factor cannot control: the soil, the wind, the sunshine, or the vagaries of a given growing season. But what we can control is the vines, the varieties we plant and where we plant them. And with its viticulture stretching back two thousand years, the Bordelais have had a lot of practise at that. This is the unique combination of vine, place and people that make the Médoc so special.
Lovely old map of the region
The sea of vines that is the Médoc
And in this country our affinity for claret that surpasses any other. Our relationship with the region is ancient, almost a thousand years of a unique cultural synergy. And in that time we have shared more than just wine; we have shared kings. Henry II married Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose son was Richard the Lion Heart, buried there where he spent most of his life when not crusading. Henry IV was crowned King of England in the City of Bordeaux.
Samuel Pepys was a fan, writing this in his diary on the the 10th of April 1663 about his first taste of Haut-Brion:
“Off to the Exchange with Sir J Cutler and Mr Grant to the Royal Oak Tavern in Lumbard Street and there drank a sort of French wine called Ho Bryan, that hath a good and most particular taste that I never met with.”
Our calamitous vote to leave the EU was perceived with an air of nochalence in Bordeaux; a few raised eyebrows and a Gallic shrug at best. Trade between us existed long before it and there was a certainty that it would continue long after. Our love for the wines means long as the vines grow in Bordeaux, there will be Brits to drink it.
So there was a real frisson of excitement that morning that was much more than the promise of a fine repast after a very early start and long journey. Because we were being hosted by Damien Barton-Sartorius owner of the legendary 2nd Growth Léoville-Barton, one of the jewels of the Médoc and shining star of its smallest commune St. Julien.
While it lacks the first growths of neighbouring Pauillac and Margaux, St. Julien does have a host of Deuxièmes Grands Crus Classés. Indeed 87% of the estates within the commune were awarded Cru Classé status in 1855, the highest of any comune in the Haut-Médoc, so while it lacks the gravitas of a 1er Cru it makes up for it with an obdurate consistency. It is hard to find a bad glass of St. Julien, harder still to find one from Léoville-Barton.
You may be wondering how the three Léovilles relate to each other, and there is a fascinating history behind it: all originally were part of the mighty Léoville estate, at the time the largest in the Médoc.
Its owner, the Marquis de Las-Cases-Beauvoir, was forced to flee during the French revolution and the estate was seized. All of it was intended to be sold but only the quarter that was to form Léoville-Barton eventually was, to Irish merchant extraordinaire Hugh Barton, whose family had been trading in the region since 1725 and already the steward of neighbouring Château Langoa-Barton.
Hugh had himself been arrested by the revolutionary forces but was fortunate enough to be released, and fortune further smiled on him with the unlooked for opportunity to buy those rarefied vineyards from his neighbour. There was a gentleman’s agreement to return the vineyards but once the threat of Madame Guillotine and the Marquis could come home, he did not have the funds to buy them back, so they stayed with the Barton family. Poyferré was later divided from Las-Cases through inheritence.
Unsurprisingly Hugh new vineyards came with no Château or winery: those of course stayed at Las-Cases. Instead they used the Château and facilities they already owned at Langoa, a situation that remains to this day. In fact the Château depicted on Léoville-Barton’s beautiful label is actually Langoa, creating a conundrum of Matrix-esque proportions: just as there is no spoon, there is no Château Léoville-Barton.
But then the soul of any great wine estate lies with the vineyards not its buildings. Léoville-Barton’s 50 hectares of vines sit atop a beautiful bank of deep Pyrenean gravels with limestone and sand sitting on a bed of clay, almost kissing the Gironde, just south of those of Las-Cases and Poyferré with Ducru-Beaucaillou beyond.
The free-draining upper-layer forces the vines to dig deep for water, while the clay bed retains it, a saving grace when the dry conditions of a hot Bordeaux summer begin to bite. The vineyards also boast some of the oldest vines in the Médoc, a legacy of Ronald Barton who was steward of the estate in the post-war period. A staunch traditionalist Ronald resisted replanting the vineyards after the neglect of the war enabling the estate to make some of the great post-war vintages, and cementing Léoville-Barton’s reputation for elegant but hugely concentrated wines.
After the conservatism of Ronald’s reign, the modern era of the estate really began when his nephew Anthony Barton took over in 1986. Anthony was born in Kildare County in Ireland but spent most of his life in Bordeaux and became one of its most iconic figureheads, a true gentleman of the Médoc.
Under him Léoville-Barton grew into its modern form, with an inimitable reputation for excellent, long-lived claret at, most importantly, fair prices. For while Anthony threw off the conservatism of his uncle’s time and embraced modernity, he remained a man of remarkable principle, out of step with many of his peers by refusing to arbitrarily increase his prices, or chase the critical approval of a single man who at the time held such a disproportionate influence over Bordeaux’s commercial success.
He eschewed the exuberance that demanded and instead honed the traditional style that followers of Léoville-Barton expected. And it was appreciated, certainly here in Britain, with the estate’s release always one of the most hotly anticipated in any given vintage, and 40% of its total production sold here. I remember my first en primeur tasting, the 2009 vintage, where steadily less orderly queues formed to taste the nascent 2nd Growth, without doubt the star of the evening.
Sadly Anthony passed in 2022 but by that time a new generation of Bartons were ready to take up the baton, with an unbroken familial line of ownership stretching back over 180 years, the oldest in the Médoc and one of only two estates to be owned by the same family at the time of the 1855 classification, the other being Mouton-Rothschild.
And meeting with Damien it was clear he is cut from the same cloth as his grandfather. He and Izarra the dog hosted us beneath the warm June sunshine on a well-appointed terrace overlooking the Château’s stunning gardens. Hearing him speak you really get a sense of his passion for the the familial legacy, the Château, the region, the vineyards and the winemaking process.
His philosophy is a simple one but one that shapes the entire approach at the venerable estate. He believes the work is done in the vineyard, echoes of the same philosophy I heard working at Felton Road in New Zealand. Their biodynamic method sets soil health above all else, because to getting that right creates a domino effect translating into rude vine health necessary to produce profound berry fruit at harvest.
I had the chance to express this to Damien and there was immediate empathy, a shared philosophy between two disparate estates half the world apart, growing different varieties on contrasting terroirs, but both with an international reputation for superlative wines. There must be something to it.
Léoville-Barton employs a permanent staff of over 50 people, a good proporation dedicated to the vineyard allowing quick reactions to shifting conditions throughout the growth cycle.
In the past vignerons were more likely to try arm-wrestle mother nature into submission, with herbicides and pesticides that seep into the soil striping it of nutrients and killing the micro-organisms that make up the vital humus that feed the vines. Once gone it needs replacing, so further chemicals in the form of fertiliser and plant food are needed, trapping you within an artificial cycle it is difficult to break free from.
I have been in such a vineyard in New Zealand. The entire block of vines were covered entirely by a white net to ‘protect’ them from the birds and insects. Passing beneath it felt like passing under a funeral shroud, and beyond was an unatural stillness. Aside from the vines there was nothing, barely a blade of grass.
There was a genuinely eerie quality to it; a sense of wrongness that pervaded it. Coming from vineyards that positvely burst with life, from the chickens that lived there semi-feral, to the spiders and earwigs that would surprise you as you snipped the berries from the vine, to the finches that circled in flocks above, and the wild Angora goats that lived on the bluffs overlooking it, it was hard to imagine anything good produced from that shrouded, lifeless place.
And of course that is the ultimate purpose, to deliver great fruit at harvest, because without it you simply cannot make great wine, no matter what tricks you might employ in the winery. Modern vignerons see themselves as partners not masters of the vineyard and seek a natural harmony with it and the land around.
But it is not complete laissez-faire, there are not ‘natural’ wines; the competent maintain a hands-on approach, prepared to give nature a nudge in the right direction if she errs too far. Even the great bastion of biodynamics Felton Road kept a bag of sulphites in reserve, just in case. Not that they ever had to use it.
This is the way modern Médoc wine is made, and these days the Médoc is very modern indeed. No region has transformed itself more over the last 20 years. Coffers swollen from a series of acclaimed vintages and a pre-eminent position in the fine wine market, and spurred on by generous tax breaks for re-investment, Bordeaux’s venerable Châteaux have revolutionised themselves.
Gone are the pre-war presses and ancient foudres, and in their place gravity-flow wineries, suspended tanks and raw earth walls. Concomittant with the slow rise in vineyard temperatures has been this rapid embrace of modernity and the region now boasts some of the most sophisticated cellar architecture in the world. That has bought a noticable paradigm shift in the style of wines made.
While they retain the puissance of before now they are plush, fruit-generous and fresh. No longer is tasting young cru classés an exercise of endurance, coming away punch-drunk from the fierce, green tannins that pucker the palate. More than once at recent en primeur tastings have I heard ‘I could drink that now’, something unthinkabe 15 years ago.
Burgundy purists might point at this as further evidence that Bordeaux wines are born of the winery rather than the vineyard, unlike the direct terroir expressions of their beloved region. But that holds less and less water; Léoville-Barton’s disparate plots of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc are clustered together over a small area, rare in the Médoc, and each vinified seperately before each being carefully tasted and selected during the l’assemblage.
Each are a product of their own micro-terroir and one wonders what they might become were they bottled as such. But unlike a Burgundy domaine that may produce dozens of different wines from varied vineyards, Médoc’s Châteaux will only make two or at most three, any surplus sold to selected négociants to bottle.
Here the art of the blend is king, and it is an art to be admired, their wines testament to traditions honed over generations. Each captures the natural magic and nuance of a growing season, like a new child. Some are errant, some ebullient, others reticent and shy, but all are precious, and all are an indelible record of the year.
No matter what the critical consensus is of a vintage, when you live through they are all are memorable (even if there are some you would rather forget). They become disparate expressions of the viticulture and the winemaker’s art, each unique and characterful. I remember Marc Perrin of Beaucastel once telling me there are no bad vintages, just different expressions of the terroir and the winemakers art. I sure other winemakers will agree, the rest of us perhaps a little less convinced.
After the hors-d'œuvre on the terrace finished we adjourned to a cool dining room to continue lunch which was a relief from the June sun. When finished we enjoyed a swift coffee and cannelé in the courtyard of the stable complex.
At least it looks like a stable complex: Damien oversaw an 11 million euro rennovation of the winemaking facilities at Langoa (perhaps dearer still it cost the family their outdoor swimming pool and the disappointment of Damien’s grandmother). He led us through the large claret-coloured double doors into the cave de fermentation.
And Tardis-like it is certainly cavernous, an elegantly appointed but otherwise nondescript stable block on the outside but inside a huge space gently back lit by the sunlight filtering through gaps in the intricate tilework. Ahead of you the floor falls away revealing huge foudres like a squat Roman colonnade, each barrel ringed by black steel and topped a small chrome lid that pokes through the boards at your feet.
It is a beautiful, calming space full of warm wood tones and gently dappling natural light, at once simple yet intricate; a carefully curated place with purpose that effortlessly blends both artistry and industry.
A gravity-fed winery sounds almost like a work of science fiction but it is simpler than that. By having two floors it enables the young wine to be moved from press to barrel without the need for pumps or other machinery. Such gentle handling preserves delicate aromatics, prevents excess oxidisation and reduces energy consumption.
This is the new normal in the Médoc, a place once mired with inertia and hidebound tradition. Then the cellars were functional, ultilitarian places with large vats not unable to vinify smaller plots and harness the nuances of the terroir. Anthony Barton had to beg his uncle Ronald to replace their ancient destemmer/crusher. Ronald’s response was if it was good enough for the 1945 vintage, it was good enough then. Anthony resorted to subterfuge and told his uncle it had broken down irrevocably and went out and bought a new one.
So much has changed since then; now every part of the process is strictly controlled, data accumulated and analysed, to eliminate any chance of fault. Such innovation was made necessary by a crowded, fiercely competitive market for fine wine, a case of adapt or fall away.
There are always new pretenders to the throne, fresh challengers to the hegemony Bordeaux has traditionally enjoyed, like recent arrival Promontory of California gathering 100 point scores for fun. Bordeaux’s rivalry with Napa is well documented, but today there are new contenders from Tuscany and Piedmont in Italy, the luminaries of Ribera del Duero in Spain, heavyweights from Australia like Grange and Henschke’s Hill of Grace, not to mention local rivals Burgundy and the great Crus of the Rhône valley.
And the Bordelais have not been afraid of getting in on the act. Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Mouton-Rothschild was an early investor, partnering in 1979 with Robert Mondavi to create Opus One. Christian Moueix of Petrus followed, instrumental in the creation of the mighty Dominus Estate.
Others have cast their net further, with Bodegas Caro in Argentina a result of a partnership between Lafite-Rothschild and Catina Zapata, and Cheval des Andes created by Cheval-Blanc and Terrazes de los Andes. The Bordelais are acutely aware their traditional customer base has options with some alienated by cavalier pricing driven by a bull fine-wine market, which to be blunt is no more. Prices were quick to rise, much slower to drop and Bordeaux faces a constant challenge to re-engage and excite customers sufficiently.
We followed the wine and let gravity take us led by Damien and Izarra down to the lower floor. There we entered a shadowy tunnel (above) to remerge into the barrel cellar, where the nascent wines are racked and matured after fermentation in a variety of new and second fill oak barrels.
Élévage or the racking of young claret in oak barrel is one of the cornerstones of winemaking in Bordeaux. In days gone the ‘putting on the wooden jackets’ as Olivier Bernard of Domaine de Chevalier memorably put it to me, might be a way to rescue leaner years to disguise a lack of fruit.
These days little is left to chance: the temperature is at a cool 15 degrees, and the humidity constant perfect for the 12-18 months the wine will spend quietly maturing in their elegant barrels. The oxygen exchange is constantly monitored, controlling the transfer and polymerisation of both grape and oak tannins and developing the aromatic complexity and richness of the flavour profile.
With such sophisticated vinification at their disposal the wealthy estates of the Médoc can adapt to more difficult vintages and still produce great wines, despite the loud tuts of disapproval that may come from their Burgundian peers.
Directly above is the bottling room. Here neat rows of the freshly transfered 2023s hauled up from the room below were awaiting the final part of their journey at the Château alongside the vessels that will take them around the world.
The bottles had just arrived in their various formats; half, standard, magnum, double-magnum, Jereboams and a few Mathusalems (disappointingly no Melchior, the 18 litre leviation). The larger formats are not cheap, the Mathusalems costing 1000 euros so are bottled stritcly to order, one very distinct advantage of the en primeur system.
And with that final step for the wine so too was our journey over and Damien and Izarra led us out blinking back into the June sun, through a door the mirror of the one we had entered through, directly opposite it across that courtyard of coffee and cannelé.
For me it was a surprise, submerged beneath it all in those magical, liminal spaces I was disorientated, not realising I had circled down and around and up again. This simple cyclical elegance of the wine moving through this stunning new winery provided a neat mirror and symmetry to the unending waxing and waning of the seasons within the vineyards, vintage after vintage.
And this all folded cleverly beneath those unassuming stables, their yellow limestone walls and red tiles belying the slow, brilliant alchemy taking place below: the continued creation and ongoing legacy of the Barton family, the true gentlemen of the Médoc.
A small post-script if you will allow me. While I described growth in the vineyards as unending above, which for a region that has enjoyed viticulture for over 2000 years should be reasonable, the Bordelais are not so sure.
While there is no immediate existential crisis facing Bordeaux wines yet like that growers are experiencing in Santorini, those creeping vineyard temperatures are already changing the region. In 2021 CIVB, Bordeaux’s wine council, approved the use of six new grape varieties for use in Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérior AOCs.
Chosen to mitigate the impact of climate change without changing the fundamental character of the region’s wines they are late-ripening, with naturally high acidity and resistance to both hydric stress and diseases like mildew and grey rot. This is an effort to future proof the region against the coming tide of change.
Because here and elsewhere in Europe’s vineyards there are no heads-in-the-sand about climate change, you will find no apologists or deniers amongst vignerons because it is happening in front of them. As early as 2003 and its sustained heatwave you had the Champagnois looking anxiously northwards for new frontiers in Southern England to produce their sparklings wines from.
As I wrote this in a shady spot atop my beloved Cotswold Hills to escape the shimmering 30 degree heat in the valleys below in June, the radio was telling me of worse in Spain, Portugal and Southern France, where temperatures are hitting 40 and above.
Those regions are no strangers to such temperature spikes but it is never this early, this frequent, and this sustained. Each degree gained impacts the vines and viticultural practices on a fundamental level. In the UK twenty years ago heatwaves might arrive every 3-4 years, this year we have already had 3 with plenty of summer left.
In Bordeaux the old rule of thumb was 3 hot years in a decade, now it is 1 cool one every 4. The nature of the wines has already changed, with supercharged clarets generously fruited with rich, ripe tannins that used to be the preserve of a handful of vintages now the norm not the exception.
And since writing this the news that Château Lafleur, one of the great Pomerol estates, has announced it will renounce the strict appellation d'origine contrôlée rules that allow it to label its six wines as Pomerol and Bordeaux, instead designating it Vin de France. This is a truly seismic decision from one of the most pre-eminent estates on the right bank.
But it is one born of necessity rather than rebellion. Owners the Guinaudeau family feel it must break from the strict AOC framework to be able to adapt to the changing conditions, citing the heatwaves and droughts of 2025 as the breaking point. “We must change to remain the same”, as the family put it.
So it can be little wonder that the word I heard the most during my trip and subsequent research was sustainability. Carbon-neutral wineries are the new vogue, but not for fashion but for neccesity. The revolution in the Médoc’s cellars is primarily driven by the need to have the least impact on the environment around them.
Léoville-Barton have on their lands one of the few forests in the area, prime vine real-estate that could qualify for St. Julien status were it cut down and replaced. But they have not, nor will they because it is not greed that drives them, instead the sense they are temporary caretakers of the land, keeping it hale and hearty to hand down to the next generation and the one after that. This is Damien’s passion and driving-force, informed by the deep Barton familial connection with the Médoc, and long may the legacy of Hugh Barton continue. For now it is in very safe hands indeed.
Written by A James Cole