2017 Château Léoville Las Cases, St Julien, Bordeaux

Full bottle 1,339 g.

Tasted blind. Solid but not especially evolved purplish crimson. The densest colour in this blind tasting of top Cabernets and Chinese equivalents. Some ripe and interesting aromas can be coaxed out of this intense liquid. Strong Cabernet aromas. Not especially opulent. Just a little pinched on the end at the moment, but this has a future! Las Cases?

Drink 2026 - 2043 

The 2017 Léoville Las-Cases, which was bottled in July 2019, has a fragrant bouquet with rose petal and briary aromas married with cranberry, pomegranate and raspberry. A touch of tobacco emerges with time. It is certainly a more understated bouquet for this property. The palate is medium-bodied with supple tannin and a fine bead of acidity. This feels very pure and harmonious, quite complex, more so than in barrel, with darker, more savoury and ferrous fruit towards the finish. This is an excellent Léoville Las-Cases with plenty of character.

Drink 2023 - 2050

One of the finest wines of the vintage in Bordeaux, the 2017 Léoville Las Cases is a beautiful Saint-Julien that bursts from the glass with expressive aromas of cassis, wild berries, pencil shavings, violets and a subtle hint of cigar box. Medium to full-bodied, supple and enveloping, its unusually charming, sensual profile largely conceals a considerable endowment of tannin and a bright spine of acidity.

Largely spared by the frost due to its optimal location on the bank of the Gironde and subject to a draconian selection, the 2017's giving style reflects not only the vintage but also the more restrained use of press wine chez Las Cases, seeing only 7% in the blend as opposed to the 10% to 12% that was typical not too long ago. It's a masterpiece.

Drink 2023 - 2065

The 2017 Léoville Las Cases captures all the best the vintage has to offer. Rich, unctuous and stunning in its beauty, the 2017 possesses tremendous richness and textural intensity that carry through to the very long finish, all with the regal, statuesque feel that is the quintessential signature of Las Cases. Just as it was from barrel, Las Cases is wonderfully polished. Tasted two times. What a wine!

Drink 2027 - 2047

Rich ruby in colour if a little less inky than the 2015, 2016 or 2018. With clear layers of fruit, the nose is one of the rare ones in the vintage where you just want to think about the different strands coming at you. Black truffle, liquorice, cinnamon spice, saffron, slate, and cigar box are all comprised. This is a standout vintage wine. They just know how to tease flavour out of the ground at this place. Yes, it is closed, not exactly forbidding but certainly austere, with big tannins, but less so than in some vintages at this stage, and it unrolls in the mouth.

Drink 2027 - 2040

The grand vin 2017 Chateau Leoville Las Cases checks in as 79% Cabernet Sauvignon, 11% Cabernet Franc, and 10% Merlot, harvested between the 15th of September and the 4th of October. Brought up in 90% new French oak, it has an incredibly classic style that carries loads of creme de cassis, crushed rock, graphite, and smoked tobacco-like aromatics. These carry to a full-bodied, concentrated, elegant Las Cases that has fine tannins, flawless balance, and a great finish. It shows the refined, regal style of this estate, has beautiful richness and depth, and is going to drink nicely with just 5-7 years of bottle age.

Drink 2025 - 2047

This comes from 50- to 90-year-old vines and is a blend of 79% Cabernet Sauvignon, 11% Cabernet Franc and 10% Merlot with 13.28% alcohol, 3.72 pH and an IPT of 71. The 2017 Léoville Las Cases is deep garnet-purple in colour, and wow, the nose bursts with beautiful blackcurrant cordial, blackberry pie and blueberry preserve notes followed by hints of lilacs, dark chocolate, cedar chest, sassafras and liquorice with emerging wafts of oolong tea, lavender and iron ore.

Medium to full-bodied, the palate is an exercise in elegance and soft-spoken nuances within a mouth-coating palate of almost electric black and blue fruits, framed by very firm, exquisitely ripe, fine-grained tannins and seamless freshness, finishing epically long and wonderfully perfumed. Damn, that’s good.

Drink 2023 - 2070

The purity here is really something. Blackberries and blackcurrants with sandalwood, mint and other classic herbs. Full-bodied and dense with ultra-fine tannins. Silky in all ways. Goes on for a long, long time. A blend of 79% cabernet sauvignon, 11% cabernet franc and 10% merlot. Joyous and serious wine for the vintage. And comparable to 2014 and 2015.

Try after 2023