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Wine Description
The Story
La Mission Haut Brion is situated in Bordeaux' southern suburb, Talence. From 1919 and until 1983, it was Woltner family, who had owned this property. Under Woltner's reign, La Mission Haut Brion experienced one of its greatest period with string of fine vintages and was considered then as fully on the level with First Growths and sometimes even better than these. In 1983, owners of Haut Brion purchased La Mission Haut Brion and today its Jean Philippe Delmas, who's responsible for this property.
La Mission-Haut-Brion's vineyards (Cabernet Sauvignon 48%, Merlot 45%, Cabernet Franc 7%) lie on a large (up to 18 metres deep in places) gravel bank interspersed with clay. The wine is fermented in temperature-controlled, stainless steel vats and then matured in oak barriques (100% new) for 18 months. The wines of La Mission Haut Brion are rich, oaky and powerful and need at least 10 years of bottle ageing before they should be broached.
Wine Information
A beautiful dark purple hue. The first nose is intense and fascinating, full of red fruit aromas, with ripe and fresh notes simultaneously. Swirling the wine confirms the fruity, captivating powerfulness, enhanced by a superb woody, spicy hint. The first taste is round, fleshy and thick. The wine develops on a tightly-knit, juicy sensation on the palate, almost sweet, with full-body. It stretches out in length with an elegant presence of tannin, rich in taste and full of pleasure on the finish. This is a superb Château La Mission Haut-Brion, its blend well- balanced and representative of the grape varieties planted in its vineyard.
Blend:
48,6% merlot
43,2% cabernet sauvignon
8,2% cabernet franc
Estimated alcohol content: 14.7%/vol. Harvests from 7th to 29th September
Vintage 2020
In Bordeaux, the heat resulted in early flowering. Also, this led to an early harvest after a very hot summer. As a starting point, there is great maturity in the grapes, and one can expect a more opulent vintage than in the last few years.
The summer this year has been the warmest since 1959, yet the rain has fallen at the right times during the growing season. The harvest took place two weeks before the norm and will yield grapes with high potential alcohol and the lowest acidity since the 2003 vintage. As they say in Bordeaux: "It has been a good and extreme growing season which hopefully also produces great wines".
