2024 Haut Brion

I wouldn't be surprised to see the 2024 Château Haut-Brion be the wine of the vintage, and while it's not going to make you forget any of the recent truly great releases, it has more depth, suppleness, and charm than the vast majority of wines in the vintage. Ripe blackcurrants, scorched earth, graphite, crushed stone, and violets all define the aromatics, and it has nicely integrated oak, a layered, ripe, seamless mouthfeel, and building tannins. It's a beautiful, layered, elegant Haut-Brion.

Deep garnet-purple colored. Needs a lot of shaking to wake up scents of crushed black currants, red currant jelly, and boysenberries, followed by hints of Sichuan pepper, garrigue, and crushed rocks. The medium-bodied palate has a firm texture of ripe, fine-grained tannins and great freshness framing the tightly wound, mineral-laced fruits, finishing on a lingering ferrous note.

(Pessac-Léognan; 47.2% Cabernet Sauvignon; 37.5% Merlot; 15.3% Cabernet Franc; a final yield across the two estates of 26 hl/ha for the reds here; pH 3.70; c. 13.2% alcohol; 1.7% press wine). Delicate, again, and intensely floral – with ethereal, subtle but sustained and ultimately quite intense violet and fresh rose petal notes enrobing the soft, plush and plump cherry and dark berry fruits. Ample, again, much like La Mission on the attack with, again, a broad frame. At first one does not notice the tannins, but they become more and more of a presence, descending as if vertically like fine beads of shower spray, pixilating the wine. Not quite the complexity of the greatest vintages from here, accentuated in a way by the ample frame. The élévage will be very important.