The 2020 Léoville Poyferré is a rich and powerful wine, offering a complex bouquet of sweet berries, blueberry liqueur, exotic spices, and creamy oak. It’s full-bodied and concentrated, with a deep fruit core and substantial tannins that lend structure. While it is currently tannic and brooding, the wine has a remarkable potential for ageing, with a promising evolution over the next few decades. Its blend of 64% Cabernet Sauvignon, 31% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc, and 2% Petit Verdot reflects the estate’s exceptional terroir. The wine’s opulence and complexity make it a standout, with a firm but polished finish that will benefit from further maturation.

James Suckling | JS 96
Published: Dec 28, 2022

This is really floral on the nose with violets and roses, and some black berries and dark cherries. It’s medium- to full-bodied with firm and polished tannins, and plenty of hazelnut and milk chocolate. Structured, yet so finely textured. So attractive and enticing now but needs three or four years to show what it has. Try after 2026.

Decanter | D 96
Published: Jan 2, 2023
Drink: 2029-2042

Supple and generous with mouthwatering acidity, though really quite tannic at this point which does cover up some of the nuance. I like the texture, the frame and the weight, it's clean, polished and well worked, not overdone at all, but this has a sense of potent seduction in the flavours, rich blackcurrant, perfumed and scented. Detailed with lots of stony, slate, and wet stone elements giving a wonderful terroir influence. It's not as immediately charming as the 2019, the tension still prominent, but this will be brilliant in 5-10 years.

The Wine Advocate | RP 94+
Published: Apr 6, 2023
Drink: 2030-2050

A rich, powerful wine, the 2020 Léoville Poyferré offers up aromas of sweet berries, blueberry liqueur, exotic spices, incense and creamy new oak. Full-bodied, broad and layered, it's deep and concentrated, its ample core of fruit only partially concealing a hefty payload of sweet, powdery, generously extracted tannin. Poyferré is generally the most flamboyant and demonstrative of the three Léovilles, but in 2020, it's chunkier, broader shouldered and more brooding than usual.

With some 80 hectares under vine, Léoville Poyferré's parcels are interfingered with those belonging to the Delon and Barton families by the river and on the plateau of Saint-Julien. The soils are cultivated less frequently and less deeply these days, and conversion to organic methods is gradually being rolled out, parcel by parcel, some being easier to farm this way than others. Winemaking features a five- to eight-day cold soak, followed by comparatively long macerations, and maturation is in 80% new oak, with lots destined for new barrels completing their malolactic fermentation in barrel. Combined with an elevated percentage of Merlot in the vineyards (though the tendency here, as elsewhere, is to replant with more Cabernet Sauvignon), this has tended to deliver the richest, fleshiest, most flamboyant of the three Léoville estates, but while it's generally the most open out of the gates of the three, that hasn't come at the expense of longevity.

Jancis Robinson | JR 17.5+
Published: Nov 5, 2024
Drink: 2032-2052

64% Cabernet Sauvignon, 31% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petit Verdot. Special black-and-gold bottle for the centenary.
Very deep purple. Heady with all the usual opulence and complexity. Still pretty youthful with a notably heavy charge of tannins. May even evolve later than the 2022. Very dry finish at present.

Leoville-poyferre.fr

Second Grand Cru Classé in 1855, Château Léoville Poyferré is an emblematic estate in the Saint-Julien appellation. The vineyard extends over 80 hectares of magnificent deep gravel terroirs along the Gironde estuary. The wines are sensual, vibrant and precise, and their ageing potential is matched only by their charm.

2020, the vintage of a century !
A unique bottle inlaid with gold, the details of which pay tribute to the enduring strength of Léoville Poyferré: its multifaceted terroir.
Didier Thomann, Cellar Master and Bruno Clenet Vineyard Manager, praised the exceptional quality of the Merlots from the Bolitorte plot, describing them as «racy, generous and opulent».
Moreover, the Cabernet Sauvignons from the Gaunettes plot, closest to the estuary, offered this vintage exquisite finesse and elegance.
Léoville Poyferré 2020 was born under the sign of longevity. Its bottle with indelible markings will reveal, for those who taste its secrets, the timeless style of Léoville Poyferré.

Blend
64% Cabernet Sauvignon, 31% Merlot, 3% Cabernet Franc, 2% Petit Verdot

Soils
Terraces of Mindel gravel, sandy-clay subsoil

Harvest Dates
14th September to 30th September