Château Langoa Barton

Thomas Barton had been brought up in Curraghmore, Co. Fermanagh and left his native Ireland in 1722 at the age of 27 years old.

He worked with his maternal uncles Thomas and William Dickson who had considerable trade in France. It was in this connection that Thomas was sent to France, first to Montpellier, then to Marseille. He was not therefore pre-destined to be a wine merchant but when in 1725 he went to Bordeaux with its importance as an Atlantic port, Thomas became interested in wine and soon founded his first company which was later to become Barton & Guestier.

He rapidly created a financially successful business with a regular clientele in Ireland. He was a man of great authority, firm but honest in his transactions ; by 1737 he had already made a small fortune and was well respected in Bordeaux where he became known as “French Tom”. In 1743 he introduced his son William to the business but William was a man of very different calibre to his father and their relations were never of the best.

At this time the French law known as ‘Le Droit d’Aubaine’ stipulated that estates of any foreigner dying in France would revert to the French Crown. Although Thomas had applied for French citizenship, this was not in fact granted until after his death. For this reason he never bought any vineyards in France preferring to invest his considerable profits in property in Ireland.

He did rent an attractive home in the Médoc, Château Le Boscq in Saint-Estèphe, but it was his grandson Hugh who became the first member of the family to actually own a vineyard. Thomas died in 1780 aged 85.

Château Langoa has been a family property since the year 1821. For many years before purchasing this magnificent Château however, Hugh Barton had his eyes on Château Lafite but never succeeded in concluding the deal. These were the days before the classification of 1855 and although Langoa was eventually classified a 3rd growth it was surely the architecture, the elegant façade and harmonious proportions of the building which tempted Hugh.

The park

Thanks to successive generations Langoa possesses a superb park planted mainly with oak trees. The gardens are a mixture of classical French style with orderly box hedges and symmetrical lay-out combined with an English influence of more natural landscaping. The present owners Eva and Anthony Barton continue to add points of interest, frequently involving the use of XVIIIth century stonework.

The building

Built in 1758, the central part of the building comprises the three main rooms, entrance hall, dining room and drawing room. These rooms occupy the whole width of the home and in this way enjoy exceptional light with sunshine in the morning from the East and in the afternoon and evening from the West. The two wings provide some six bedrooms all elegantly decorated and today comfortably installed. This part of the dwelling is on the first floor, the ground floor being reserved for kitchen and cellars.

Cellars

At one time there were even to be found barrels of wine ageing and waiting to be bottled. Today these cellars contain bottles of numerous past vintages but the barrels are housed in more practical buildings elsewhere on the property.

The word ‘Terroir’ means a lot more than just “soil” which is however its primary significance, but it does also include notions of climate, topology and geology. Although some wine producers particularly in the New World tend to discount ‘Terroir’ as an important factor in the quality of a wine, the vineyards of Langoa and Léoville Barton have no other explanation for the differences in character of the two wines.

These can only be explained by differences of ‘Terroir’ since other important factors such as grape varieties , vine culture and wine making are virtually the same on both proprieties. It is also interesting to note that the analyses of the wines show little variation in terms of alcohol, acidity, tannin etc., yet the two wines do have their own personality and show distinctive contrasts in bouquet and palate. The soil of both vineyards is basically gravelly with clay sub-soil ; the depth at which the clay is to be found and other soil characteristics vary from one part of the vineyard to another making it even more difficult to define exactly what are the major differences in the two vineyards.

Another important factor in the make-up of these vineyards is the drainage: if considerable progress has been made recently in some sectors of wine making, the art of good drainage was well understood and applied by previous generations. To produce good wine, vines do not require rich fertile soil as this would produce big berries with a high ratio of juice to skins, whereas the opposite is the ideal. For the same reason an excess of rainfall is not desirable for making high quality wine and what rain there is must be allowed to drain off rapidly.

At harvest time the grapes arrive in the ‘Cuvier’ where they are processed and fermented in wooden vats of approximately 200 hectolitres. These big wooden vats are pleasing to the eye and typical of the traditional approach to wine making at Langoa and Léoville Barton. Some years ago it became fashionable to remove wooden vats and replace them with stainless steel. The reason for this was the easier control of temperature during fermentation in stainless steel as opposed to wood.
The Bartons thought that the expense was enormous (around 5 million francs), that the wooden vats had made excellent wines in the past and above all that in the near future a method of controlling temperature in wooden vats would be discovered. This turned out to be true and today a system of thermo-regulation enables the juice to be fermented at the exact temperature desired. So there are no regrets for having kept the wooden vats and they do look better!

Although the modern wine making methods permit wine to be drunk at a younger age than in the past, the great vintages may easily be kept for 25 to 30 years and more. It is important to remember that the lighter years drunk at the right time can give more pleasure than the great years drunk before reaching maturity.

But the Bartons do not cling to tradition for tradition’s sake. A most modern crusher-destemmer is in place and the wine press is also one of the latest models. The fermentation normally lasts for about 5 days during which time the juice is pumped over twice a day. The wine is left with the skins for about two weeks, the exact period depending on the quality of the harvest.
It is then drawn off and the skins are pressed to obtain the ‘vin de presse’ a most important component of the final blend. The malo-lactic fermentation then takes place in the vats, after which the wine is drawn off into barrels for ageing in the neighbouring cellars.
And so, the job of the ‘cuvier’ is over for another year.