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| | "With 2023, we returned to Bordeaux." Alexandre Thienpont of Le Pin & Vieux Château Certan |
| | ▪ "Generally, the 2023s are relatively more tannic than we’ve become accustomed to, more linear and vertical, though endowed with greater fruit concentration than the 2021s. That appeals to my predilection. The best wines embrace these traits while maintaining sufficient fruit and grip, occasionally harking back to the kind of barrel samples encountered in the early days of my career, and I mean that in a good sense. One virtue that underlies the best wines is a brightness or what the French term éclat. It’s a kind of nascent energy that, in my experience, augurs a sample that will evolve into a great wine. This brightness derives from the fruit, acidity, fineness of tannins, and the more intangible concept of their personality, a combination of all .... The pinnacles of 2023 possess all these factors."
Neal Martin, Vinous
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| ▪ "The young wines, tasted from cask, reflect [a] paradox, possessing — at their best — the depth, density, and ripe tannin of a sunny vintage but also the vibrant, expressive aromas and flavors of a more traditionally 'Atlantic' season. The best 2023s are just as exciting as the best 2022s ... [and] the 2023s may be released at prices as interesting as any we have seen since 2019."
William Kelley, Wine Advocate
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| ▪ "So far, I have tasted more than 900 barrel samples of 2023 Bordeaux with my team over the last 10 days in the region, and the best reds show balance and freshness with deep center palates of ripe fruit and a complement of polished tannins. In many ways, I like them better than many of the highly touted 2022s because they are so Bordeaux in their nature with their tensioned mouthfeels and energetic finishes."
James Suckling
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| | | | ▪ "A stand out wine from Haut-Brion this year and one of the most charming Primeur samples from the estate. A little sombre on the nose, quiet with dark fruit, blackcurrant and brambles. Not so open on the nose, but this wows on the palate - rich, dense for the vintage, weighty in the mouth, clearly ripe and so filling. Chewy and alive, this is brilliant with a buzz of acidity, a sharp, sour, tartness but all so excellently delivered. So charming and so cuddly, this wine wants you to adore it. Bright and voluptuous, and not many can say that in this vintage. Really so great and still with chocolate, mint, pepper, raspberries, and floral notes all the way through. A complete knock out because it has flesh, juice, brightness and style. 3.7ph 4.3 acidity 80 IPT - second highest year after 2010 for the concentration. 42% grand vin production. A potential 100-point wine."
98-100
Georgie Hindle, Decanter Magazine
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| ▪ "This is an exceptional Haut-Brion, offering juice and elegant balance alongside classically structured layers, generous but restrained, sense of architecture and building blocks of a truly great Left Bank wine. Rippling with sinewy muscles, juicy and controlled, packed with cocoa bean, espresso, liouqorice root, but none of these flavours dominate, knitted together, with a vertical lift. 100% new oak, Jean-Philippe Delmas director, Jean-Philippe Masclef technical director, no outside consultant."
98-100
Jane Anson, Inside Bordeaux |
| ▪ "A blend of 52.3% Merlot, 38.6% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 9.1% Cabernet Franc, the 2023 Haut-Brion has a pH of 3.7 and a deep garnet-purple color. It is quite closed to begin, needing a lot of patient swirling to coax out notes of plum preserves, black cherry compote, and wild blueberries, leading to perfumed hints of peonies, crushed stones, rose bud tea, and licorice, with a touch of wood smoke. The medium to full- bodied palate delivers black and blue fruit layers that shimmy and swirl in the mouth with jaw-dropping energy, accented by mineral and exotic spice notes and supported with a firm backbone and plush, plush tannins, finishing with a breathtaking firework display. Very clever wine."
98-100
Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, The Wine Independent |
| | | | ▪ "One of the finest wines in the vintage, the 2023 Château La Mission Haut-Brion is based on 52.7% Merlot, 29.6% Cabernet Sauvignon, and the rest Cabernet Franc. It's one hell of a gorgeous wine offering a massive nose of black raspberries, graphite, liquid flowers, scorched earth, and chocolate-like aromas and flavors. It delivers remarkable purity, full-bodied richness, no hard edges, and fine-grained, sweet tannins. The overall balance paired with opulence here is something to behold, and it’s incredible to find this level of quality in the vintage."
96-100
Jeb Dunnuck
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| ▪ "A blend of 52.7% Merlot, 29.6% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 17.7% Cabernet Franc, La Mission Haut-Brion 2023 has a pH of 3.7 and a deep garnet-purple color. It slowly emerges from the glass with fragrant notes of ripe plums, boysenberries, and Morello cherries, opening out to a wonderfully evocative nose of Indian spices, fragrant soil, iron ore, and rose oil. The full-bodied palate is laden with ripe, opulent black fruit and exotic spices layers, lifted by red berry accents and ferrous sparks, framed by velvety tannins and finishing with epic length."
96-98+
Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, The Wine Independent
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| | | | ▪ "Blackberry, black cherry, crushed stone and graphite. Lead pencil, too. It’s full-bodied with juicy, chewy tannins. Vertical and layered with lovely length. Quite plush. Chewy tannins at the end. Cabernet Sauvignon-driven. Showing excellent potential."
97-98
James Suckling
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| ▪ "Concentrated, intense and muscular, not a word that I have used very often in 2023 Bordeaux. You get a deeply-rooted tannic grip, with soot, squid ink, cassis, blackberry, bilberry, liqourice root, slate scrap, pummice stone and mint. Lynch Bages seems to be wrought from a different place than it was a decade ago, impressive, powerful Pauillac, with an eye on long ageing."
96
Jane Anson, Inside Bordeaux
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