Leoville Las Cases 1986

Michel Delon, a great man, is the consummate proprietor, meticulously administering this vast estate spread out along the St.-Julien/Pauillac border, separated from Latour's finest vineyard by a mere ten feet. The 1993-95 vintages from Delon are brilliant wines. Leoville-Las-Cases remains one of the irrefutable reference points for high class Bordeaux. This saturated purple-colored wine possesses remarkable sweetness, powerful, chocolatey, cassis-scented aromas, and dense, medium to full-bodied flavors with a superb inner-core of fruit. Purity, balance, and super-concentration and intensity are hallmarks of this remarkable wine. Readers who find it difficult to believe that the 1993 vintage could turn out wines such as this only need to pull the cork on a bottle of the 1993 Leoville-Las-Cases. Anticipated maturity: now-2012. This lion never falls asleep on the job!

Score: 98

Robert Parker, 'Bordeaux' 3rd Ed. Maturity: 2003-2030 31 January 1998