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Every year when we taste the Clarence Dillon wines, our big conundrum is which do we think is best, La Mission and Haut Brion. As is so often the case, it was a split decision this year, but I loved La Mission! Shining bright purple colour, this is full of bramble fruits on the nose. This beautifully poised and balanced wine blends an initial richness and sweetness with subtly layered tannins providing complexity and nuance. A total charmer and everything I look for in La Mission: subtle exuberance with gravelly structure. Unquestionably one of the stand-out wines of the vintage.
Every year when we taste the Clarence Dillon wines, our big conundrum is which do we think is best, La Mission and Haut Brion. As is so often the case, it was a split decision this year, but I loved La Mission! Shining bright purple colour, this is full of bramble fruits on the nose. This beautifully poised and balanced wine blends an initial richness and sweetness with subtly layered tannins providing complexity and nuance. A total charmer and everything I look for in La Mission: subtle exuberance with gravelly structure. Unquestionably one of the stand-out wines of the vintage.
The 2017 La Mission Haut-Brion was picked from 4 to 29 September and matured in 68% new oak with 14.1° alcohol. It has a more broody bouquet than previous years: dark berry fruit, brown spices, warm gravel and later, a touch of orange rind. This can sometimes be sultry out of barrel and the 2017 falls into that category. The palate is medium-bodied with very fine tannin. This La Mission Haut-Brion is built around a wonderful structure and symmetry. It feels precise with a detailed, saline finish that lingers in the mouth. I can see Jean-Philippe Delmas’s comparison with the 2001 though I find the tannins finer in the 2017. Superb. 2023 - 2050
The 2017 La Mission Haut-Brion is a wine of total finesse and class. Pliant and expressive, the 2017 is beautifully layered from start to finish. Bright red cherry, plum, mocha, pomegranate and blood orange all add to an impression of grace and freshness. This is one of the most refined, understated recent vintages of La Mission I can remember tasting.
The 2017 La Mission Haut-Brion, blended of 56% Merlot, 39.6% Cabernet Sauvignon and 4.4% Cabernet Franc, is very deep garnet-purple in color and scented of crushed blackcurrants, blackberries and chocolate-covered cherries with suggestions of cigar box, bay leaves, Indian spices and dusty soil. Medium to full-bodied with very firm, grainy tannins and a racy backbone supporting the taut, muscular fruit, it has bags of mineral and earthy suggestions layering the very long finish.
This is a very tight and focused young La Mission with a pretty center palate of dark fruit and flavors of oyster shell and hints of fresh tobacco. Serious and precise on the finish. 56% merlot, 40% cabernet sauvignon and 4% cabernet franc.
When I picked up the glass, I said under my breath, ‘this is heavier’, and it is – cue much mirth. The statistics above prove this and the colour is much darker than the second wine, but the real clue comes from the nose, which is dense, foresty, spicy and unyielding. The graphite tones are riveting and the tannins are powerful and upright. A long-lived wine with obvious structure and density, this is a quite different style to La Chapelle, which has clearly taken all of the red-fruited material and left the dense and bold grapes for this wine. Do not approach it for a decade, because there is both graininess and also dryness here, which creeps forward on the palate and you must let it retire right the way back to the finish to achieve balance. This is undoubtedly a remarkable wine and one which sits a little outside of the vintage. The only real clue to its year is the devastating acidity which brings shocking drama to the whole. Along with its stablemate, this is one of the wines of the vintage.
Deep cassis colour. Gorgeous restraint of fine dusty dark fruit. Definite graphite/mineral aroma undergirded by fragrant cassis and a light herbaceous note. Delicious pure black fruit, super-fine texture, the tannins fine and supple. Juicy even with its serious elegance. Succulent, long and precisely balanced. Persistent, too. Intensity without weight. All waiting in the wings. On second tasting, the oak shows a little more on the finish but it is in place, not dominating. (JH) 14.1% Drink 2027-204
Stretching from the rather unglamorous southern suburbs of Bordeaux, for 50 km along the left bank of the river Garonne, lies Graves. Named for its gravelly soil, a relic of Ice Age glaciers, this is the birthplace of claret, despatched from the Middle Ages onwards from the nearby quayside to England in vast quantities. It can feel as though Bordeaux is just about red wines, but some sensational white wines are produced in this area from a blend of sauvignon blanc, Semillon and, occasionally, muscadelle grapes, often fermented and aged in barrel. In particular, Domaine de Chevalier is renowned for its superbly complex whites, which continue to develop in bottle over decades. A premium appellation, Pessac-Leognan, was created in 1987 for the most prestigious terroirs within Graves. These are soils with exceptional drainage, made up of gravel terraces built up in layers over many millennia, and consequently thrive in mediocre vintages but are less likely to perform well in hotter years. These wines were appraised and graded in their own classification system in 1953 and updated in 1959, but, like the 1855 classification system, this should be regarded with caution and the wines must absolutely be assessed on their own current merits.
