Winemaker Notes
A splendid dark, garnet red color. The first nose is powerful, very fruity and ripe. On swirling, these sensations are heightened; it’s enchanting! The attack is wide, fleshy and graceful. The wine fills the mouth with a soft, generous presence. The tannins are perceptible, juicy and smooth. The three grape varieties are combined to give a completely ideal balance between the aromas, flavors and elegance of tannin. It is quite simply delicious and so full of promise for the future!
Blend: 47% Cabernet Sauvignon, 38% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Franc
This wine does not include the blanket 10% tariff imposed in April 2025. When the wines are shippable in fall of 2027, customers will have the option to pay any tariff in place at the time or to keep their wines stored in a temperature-controlled facility free of charge in France.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This year, the style of Haut Brion shows through with transparency, beautiful balance and precision. Fine austerity, with excellent minerality, dark olives and red and dark berries. Structured on the mid-palate. Beautiful depth for the vintage, with really fine-grained tannins and a lengthy finish that lingers. So much vibrancy and finesse. A classic vintage.
Barrel Sample: 97-98 -
Jeb Dunnuck
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.
Barrel Sample: 95-97 -
Vinous
The 2024 Haut-Brion is dark and brooding in demeanor, but obviously not as tannic or forbidding as it can be in the early going. All the Haut-Brion signatures are very much present, but they're portrayed in a decidedly understated style that speaks to the personality of the year. Black fruit, scorched earth, spice, tobacco and leather build with time in the glass. The 2024 is a super-classy Haut-Brion. There's gorgeous substance here. –Antonio Galloni
Barrel Sample: 94-96 -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2024 Haut-Brion is more perfumed than La Mission Haut-Brion, unfurling in the glass with aromas of raspberries, cassis, dark berries and spices mingled with elegantly floral touches. Medium to full-bodied, layered and sappy, it has a firm texture and powdery tannins, leading to a long, spicy and lead pencil-inflected finish. Composed of 47.2% Cabernet Sauvignon, 37.5% Merlot and 15.3% Cabernet Franc, this vintage features one of the highest proportions of Cabernet Franc in recent years—comparable to vintages such as 1993, 2004, 2010, 2011 and 2020—and should gain harmony with the élevage. In the context of the vintage, this is a notable success, owing in large part to Haut-Brion’s intramural position in Pessac, where the estate’s terroir benefits from slightly warmer average temperatures than properties located outside the city, contributing to more complete ripening of the grapes.
Barrel Sample: 93-95 -
Decanter
Sweet floral and red berry scents on the nose - cherry sweets and perfume. Succulent and massy in the mouth, this has flesh and muscle - generous and plentiful with a sweet and cool, spiced edge to the fruit. Clean and pure, lacking a touch in definition, but good length and push. Dried herbs, cherry stone and cranberry fruit with some sweet tobacco on the finish. I like the filling texture, but it tapers towards the finish and loses a bit of momentum in terms of density. Enjoyable minty, cola, liquorice minerality. Feels quite classic and should expand over ageing.
Barrel Sample: 94
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
Recognized for its superior reds as well as whites, Pessac-Léognan on the Left Bank claims classified growths for both—making it quite unique in comparison to its neighboring Médoc properties.
Pessac’s Chateau Haut-Brion, the only first growth located outside of the Médoc, is said to have been the first to conceptualize fine red wine in Bordeaux back in the late 1600s. The estate, along with its high-esteemed neighbors, La Mission Haut-Brion, Les Carmes Haut-Brion, Pique-Caillou and Chateau Pape-Clément are today all but enveloped by the city of Bordeaux. The rest of the vineyards of Pessac-Léognan are in clearings of heavily forested area or abutting dense suburbs.
Arid sand and gravel on top of clay and limestone make the area unique and conducive to growing Sémillon and Sauvignon blanc as well as the grapes in the usual Left Bank red recipe: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and miniscule percentages of Petit Verdot and Malbec.
The best reds will show great force and finesse with inky blue and black fruit, mushroom, forest, tobacco, iodine and a smooth and intriguing texture.
Its best whites show complexity, longevity and no lack of exotic twists on citrus, tropical and stone fruit with pronounced floral and spice characteristics.