The key to understanding Saint-Julien is to try and think of the style of wine as somewhere between the perfume and elegance of Margaux and the power and density of Pauillac.
The firm could get all the fruit that it needed from all the best places in the region: "Imagine you can bottle a Pauillac which would be a blend of Mouton, Latour and Lafite, " he wrote in an email.