2022 Château Haut-Brion Blanc, Pessac-Léognan, Bordeaux

The 2022 Haut-Brion Blanc has a well-defined bouquet with fresh Anjou pear, white peach and orange pith scents - excellent definition and focus. The palate is well balanced with a waxy texture, light tropical notes and stems ginger hints toward the lively finish. This is an excellent Haut Brion Blanc, though it doesn’t fully match the calibre of its most outstanding vintages.

Delivering aromas of peach, sweet orchard fruit, spring flowers and lemon oil, the 2022 Haut-Brion Blanc is a full-bodied wine with a seamless, enveloping profile. It’s glossy, textural mid-palate that segues into a sappy, racy finish of crystalline purity. 

A blend of 51.4% Sémillon and 48.6% Sauvignon Blanc, this wine is fatter and fleshier than the more tensile La Mission Haut-Brion and will, in all likelihood, offer a broader drinking window.

The 2022 Haut-Brion Blanc is fabulous. Rich, explosive and dramatic, the 2022 is stunning right out of the glass. Soft curves wrap around a core of lemon confit, marzipan, chamomile, dried flowers and mint. The 2022 is a serious white that will blossom beautifully with time. It is wonderfully impressive in this tasting.

Drink 2028 - 2042

The 2022 Château Haut-Brion Blanc is close to an even split of Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc, but it seems to lead with its Sauvignon at this point and has bright citrus, lime pith, honeyed flower, and obvious chalky minerality on both the nose and palate. Medium to full-bodied and beautifully balanced, with notable concentration and acidity, it’s another brilliant wine from this team.

Herbal and scented on the nose, blossom, green apple, ginger and lemon - intense and sharp, more tense and decisive, poised with excellent movement and intensity of fruit. It doesn’t have the sharp acidity; it’s the structure, texture and construction that is so compelling. 

Nicely filling and weighty, almost oily but cool and charming. That added intensity, and tension keeps this more lively and lifted than La Mission Blanc, which is more fun and friendly. Confident and well-balanced, still not super acidic or particularly thrilling; the overall frame is excellent, and the spice and bitterness aspects are appealing. 

It feels purposeful and makes you want another glass. 3.3pH.

Drink 2023 - 2037

Dried lemon and lime with honeysuckle and stone aromas that follow through to a full body with fantastic length and energy at the end. Phenolics give it great length and stature. 51.4% semillon and 48.6% sauvignon blanc.

Nectarine, peach pit, biscuit, liquorice root, charcoal, gunsmoke; this is a thoroughly well-structured white wine with 3.3ph, a little higher than in some vintages but delivers grip, freshness, complexity and ageing ability. 41.9% new oak. Harvest August 16 to 23.

Drink 2023 - 2032