2005 Saint Julien - Chateau Léoville Poyferré

Dark plum, crushed gravel, tense black licorice. Crème de cassis, pencil shavings, tart blackberry filling. Blooming violet and fragrant iris, roasted tobacco and cool menthol. Deep, dense, and extraordinarily tight fruit broods menacingly in a wound-up bouquet driven by earth and intense graphite-laden minerality. Fresh floral perfume delicately dances around the taut and racy core in tow with lifted anise and muddled mint. Gorgeous vanilla bean and fine cinnamon combine with cedar and clove in a relatively conservative display of pristine baking spices sprinkled delicately across the lot. Initially young, tart, backward, and a bit reduced; requiring many hours of patient decanting to fully unfurl its intricate feathers. Medium plus in body and acidity with assertive yet polished tannin. This 2005 Saint Julien by Chateau Léoville Poyferré is an absolutely outstanding second growth Bordeaux from an epic vintage.

The story of Chateau Léoville Poyferré began back in 1638 as a part of Chateau Léoville, which for its time was one of the most technologically advanced houses in all of Bordeaux. Chateau Léoville was later split up and Chateau Léoville Poyferré was born as a result, but the glory days of Léoville Poyferré did not begin until the 1980's when major efforts were taken to improve quality. This bottling, crafted by Léoville Poyferré using primarily Cabernet Sauvignon along with some Merlot and Cab Franc grown in their estate vineyards in Saint Julien, exhibits why this storied producer is so highly respected today. In the style of the vintage this wine unbelievably packed full of lush and concentrated fruit yet it remains strikingly earth driven and balanced. It could easily benefit from a few more decades of cellaring but is extremely enjoyable today with a proper decant. Absolutely wonderful stuff.