Saint Julien

The 2016 Duluc de Branaire-Ducru is a soft, fruity wine to drink now and over the next few years, while the red/purplish berry fruit and floral notes retain their youthful vibrancy.

Medium ruby garnet colour with candied red fruits and some earthy notes. The palate is medium bodied with a silky texture. Black cherry, raspberry and licorice with secondary notes of leather, dried herbs and well integr...(read more)

Good wholesome aromatic fruit. Delicacy and precision, red fruit with high-toned red currant, then a bit more depth. There's really a very attractive richness here. A little spice. Goes on well.

Plush and rounded, lively and winning with a good mid-palate feel and the quite evident oak is attractive rather than overpowering.

The initial impression is of a very strong sweet oakiness - rather new world in style. But the volume is there underneath and the dense fruit character of the wine shrugs off this coating and powers on with smooth dry Ca...(read more)

Incomparable scent!. A lot of Merlot in Langoa this year, and the open, sweet juicy gorgeousness of it can probably be put down to this. Very aromatic, fluidly elegant, full of very pure flavour. Complex and interesting,...(read more)

As the general manager Jean-Pierre Marty remarks, Talbot does well in hot years. 37% Merlot, 59% Cabernet Sauvignon, 3 or 4% Petit Verdot. Nice bright nose. Curranty cassis. It quickly gathers pace on the palate, fine te...(read more)

Fresh. Showing Talbot medicinal Cabernet, cool and supple blackcurrant, then firming noticeably, but still fresh, still crisp on the finish.

Very rich, very fine attack - liquid-fresh, finer that silk, sweet, pure crème de fruits attack. Big, despite Marcel Ducasse’s stated aim of promoting elegance above all, ‘this is the limit of power that I like’,...(read more)

82% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Merlot. In contrast to the Grand Puy Lacoste in the same 'stable', Ducru is sweet to taste, round and ripe, all of one piece, tannins fine but very present giving a feel of volume, an impressi...(read more)

From very low yields (what were they doing here? It is way below their neighbours) 14.5% Merlot, 13.9% Cabernet Franc, 66.7% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Petit Verdot, and even at these yields, only 43% of the production will...(read more)

The 1996 Leoville Barton appears more youthful than the 1996 Langoa Barton in the glass with a healthy deep garnet core. The aromatics unfurl gracefully in the glass revealing briary, wild hedgerow, black truffle and san...(read more)