2015 Chateau Leoville Poyferre Saint Julien Grand Cru Classe

94 Points Neal Martin, Wine Advocate: "The 2015 Leoville Poyferre had a deep purple/ruby color. The bouquet is very concentrated, more so than its peers but not excessively so, laden with pure blackberry, raspberry and light cassis scents, the new oak (85%) neatly integrated although it will require several years to be completely subsumed. The palate is medium-bodied with impressive weight and presence. It is a voluminous Poyferre with ample ripe blackberry, white pepper and cedar notes, that seam of graphite that I noticed en primeur extant and lending that Pauillac-like personality toward the creamy finish. It is an excellent 2015, although it is going to require longer in bottle to reach full maturity, 8-10 years or so."

One Great Estate, Split Three Ways

In the eighteenth century, the Domaine de Léoville was the largest vineyard in the Médoc at over 200 hectares, a single estate stretching across the finest gravel in northern Saint-Julien. The French Revolution and the inheritance battles that followed carved it into three, the last piece falling into place in 1840: Léoville Las Cases, Léoville Barton, and Léoville Poyferré. When the brokers of Bordeaux ranked the region's estates for the 1855 Classification, all three were named Second Growths. No other vineyard in Bordeaux history produced three classified growths from a single original property!

The final split came in 1840, when Pierre Jean de Las Cases took the share that became Léoville Las Cases, while his sister Jeanne's portion passed to her daughter, the wife of Baron Jean-Marie de Poyferré de Cérès, giving the estate its name. The vineyards were divided but the buildings never were! To this day Las Cases and Poyferré share a single courtyard and parking lot, an arrangement found nowhere else in Bordeaux. Kinda wild given Bordeaux's competitive and insular nature. Park at one, and you have arrived at the other.

A quick dive into the terroir will explain why its more than a shared parking lot these two have in common. These vineyards sit on deep Günzian gravel mounds in the northern half of Saint-Julien, hard against the Pauillac border, close enough to the Gironde estuary that the old Médoc saying applies here... "the best vines see the river". The gravel drains ruthlessly, forcing roots deep, and the estuary moderates both frost and heat. It is essentially the same geological neighborhood as Latour, which sits just across the commune line. Las Cases is in fact separated from Latour by one of the Dutch-dug jalles, or Médoc drainage canals. Poyferré's parcels are interlaced with those of Las Cases, so the raw material is equivalent. What separates the three Léovilles today is style and philosophy.

Las Cases picks early and builds austere, tannic wines that demand decades. Barton is the classicist, traditional and firm, with inclusion of the most Cabernet Sauvignon and eschewing green harvests in order to hold ripening back. Poyferré places the opposite bet. The Cuvelier family, owners since 1920, deliberately harvests later than either of its siblings, pushing for full phenolic ripeness before bringing fruit in. The result is the most generous of the three, plush and deeply fruited with a supple supplement of Merlot, but with all the structure that gravel and Cabernet provide underneath. When Didier Cuvelier took over in 1979 he replanted, rebuilt the cellar, and brought in Michel Rolland, and the estate has been on an upward run since. Léoville-Poyferré delivers the most opulent, modern, and creamiest of the Léoville's todya. The 2009 earned a perfect score and forced a re-evaluation of the whole property. Today Poyferré routinely performs at the level of estates trading for twice the price.

Château Le Crock is the other half of the family story. Just over the boundary in Saint-Estèphe, its vineyard sits between Cos d'Estournel and Montrose, and it is farmed and made by the same team responsible for Poyferré. In fact, this was the very first estate the Cuvelier family purchased in 1903, and is the pride and joy of the family. It holds the Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel designation, the top tier of that classification, and the 2018 is a terrific example.  Finding a more crowd-pleasing Bordeaux for this price may be a fool's errand.  Saint-Estèphe density with the polish of the Poyferré cellar.  - BRANDON KERNE, MASTER SOMMELIER