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Wine Description
The Story
Haut-Brion Blanc is as renowned as it is scarce, with only about 8,000 bottles available per vintage for a very demanding market. It is often regarded as the greatest white of Bordeaux, although Haut-Brion Blanc’s sibling, Laville Haut-Brion, sometimes equals and occasionally surpasses it. The white vineyards at Haut-Brion are planted to 63 percent Sémillon and 37 percent Sauvignon Blanc, a weighting that gives this wine its particularly plush combination of Sémillon-driven body and Sauvignon-influenced scent of musk. Haut-Brion Blanc ages beautifully.
White Bordeaux does not come much more layered and powerful than this. Strong oak roasted nut notes are evident on the nose but dissipate quickly on the palate. Taut yet shapely refreshing but rich. A large framed wine that manages to find harmony. Alongside exotic touches of stone fruit there are some wonderfully energising fruit characteristics of crystallised lemon rind, grapefruit and lime. Long, complex and very intense without being too weighty.
Vintage 1929
The year 1929 was an extraordinary year in the Bordeaux vineyards as well as on Wall Street. When the U.S. stock market collapsed in 1929, it produced several undesirable effects abroad, particularly in Europe, where many countries had not fully recovered from the aftermath of World War I. In Germany, the economic disaster and resulting social dislocation contributed to the rise of Adolf in the United States, there were 16 million unemployed – about a third of the available labor force.
In Bordeaux, the 1929 is one of the “legendary” vintages of the century. Its reputation was made even greater as the 1930s were truly a disastrous decade, and it wasn't until 1945 that anything of equivalent quality was made. In Bordeaux, these sixteen years were one of the longest “dark periods” of the 20th century. The year 1929 was extremely hot and dry, the driest since the turn of the century. It only rained for a short time during harvest, but the nice warm weather returned. The grapes became very concentrated, rich in tannins and produced wine to last.