Négociant
Les Vins Fins Anthony Barton
How to read this
Capitals mark the stressed syllable. “ahn”, “ohn” and “an” are nasal vowels: say them through the nose, with no n. The French r comes from the back of the throat. The recording is the reference.
Anthony Barton left the family firm in 1967 to set up this house under his own name, 16 years before Langoa and Léoville came to him in 1983.
The house
The Bartons have been merchants in Bordeaux since 1725, when Thomas Barton settled there from County Fermanagh, and the house he began became Barton & Guestier. Anthony Barton, born at Straffan House, in County Kildare, in 1930, came to France in 1951, at 21, and went to work in it. His first harvest that year was so bad that his uncle Ronald, who owned Langoa and Léoville, told him: “Another harvest like this and I will have to sell.” In the 1950s Barton & Guestier passed to foreign capital: Seagram took a half share in 1954 and later the whole. He stayed until 1967, as its export director, then set up a house under his own name, Les Vins Fins Anthony Barton, which has always belonged to the family.
Lilian Barton Sartorius joined her father at the end of the 1970s. The estates came to him later: in 1983 his uncle Ronald Barton handed over Langoa and Léoville. Lilian’s husband, Michel Sartorius, joined the house in 1999. In 2011 she and her 2 children bought Château Mauvesin Barton, in Moulis, and the house now has its office there. Anthony Barton died in January 2022.
Lilian Barton Sartorius runs the house and its export sales, and Michel Sartorius looks after France. Besides allocations of other classed growths, the house sells La Croix Barton and wines under the Anthony Barton name, and since 2021 it has distributed in France the Initio range of 4 appellation wines. Château Léoville Barton and Château Langoa Barton, Second and Third Growths of Saint-Julien, are both made at Langoa, and La Réserve de Léoville Barton is the second wine of Léoville Barton. The house sells them all, with Mauvesin Barton and its second wine, Emotion de Mauvesin Barton: the wines of the 3 Barton estates.
At a glance
- Kind
- Négociant
- Based in
- Moulis-en-Médoc, at the Domaine de Mauvesin
- Founded
- By Anthony Barton, after he left Barton & Guestier in 1967
- Owner
- The Barton family, from the start
- Direction
- Lilian Barton Sartorius; Michel Sartorius, sales in France
- Brands
- La Croix Barton; Anthony Barton
Sources
- Books and studies
- Raymond Blake, The Barton Dynasty, Inside Bordeaux, 2022
- Registers
- SIREN 468 200 035 (Annuaire des Entreprises); SCEA du Château Mauvesin Barton, SIREN 509 035 481 (Annuaire des Entreprises)
- Companies
- Barton & Guestier, History
- Châteaux
- Château Langoa Barton, the dynasty; Château Mauvesin Barton, history; Château Léoville Barton, 3 centuries of history
- Its own publications
- Les Vins Fins Anthony Barton, Qui sommes nous
Revised October 10, 2026. How I choose sources
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