Winemaker Notes
Blend: 67% Sémillon, 33% Sauvignon Blanc
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is so powerful with incredibly subtle fruit character of pineapple, peaches and apples. Some lees and cream. Full-bodied yet remains agile and tensioned. Wonderful finish. Hard not to drink now. For now or ageing.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2015 Chateau La Mission Haut Brion Blanc is a Sémillon-dominated white (there’s roughly 33% Sauvignon Blanc) from this team, and it’s a ripe, opulent effort that gives up smokin’ good notes of orange blossom, citrus oil, and white peach. Rich, unctuous, and loaded with character, this full-bodied beauty fills the mouth with fruit yet has bright minerality and acidity keeping it fresh and lively. It’s going to keep for two decades.
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Wine Enthusiast
Concentrated and with tight, mineral fruitiness, this wine is potentially ripe and rich, with citrus and orange peel crispness. The wine will be rich, rounded and packed with fruit, but it will take time. Drink from 2023.
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Wine Spectator
Gorgeous, showing Bosc pear and Jonagold apple fruit laced with a bright green plum note and backed by alluring honeysuckle, quinine and chamomile accents. This has a creamy texture, but with stone-cold precision through the finish.
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Decanter
Delicate but powerful, this has beautiful aromatics, the bite of a fresh peach and a wonderful sense of roundness without being heavy. Gorgeous. Fairly typical blend of 67% Semillon, 33% Sauvignon Blanc. This is going to age beautifully thanks to its clear sense of vibrancy and well-defined strands of flavour.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Made up of 33% Sauvignon Blanc and 67% Semillon, the La Mission Haut-Brion 2015 Blanc has a slightly closed nose, offering peeks at lemon curd, white peach and yuzu notes with accents of musk perfume, garrigue, fresh hay and wet pebbles. Medium to full-bodied with a lovely textural element of phenolic grip and a racy acid line cutting through the intense stone fruit and savory layers, it finishes with great persistence.
Rating: 94+
Sometimes light and crisp, other times rich and creamy, Bordeaux White Blends typically consist of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon. Often, a small amount of Muscadelle or Sauvignon Gris is included for added intrigue. Popularized in Bordeaux, the blend is often mimicked throughout the New World. Somm Secret—Sauternes and Barsac are usually reserved for dessert, but they can be served before, during or after a meal. Try these sweet wines as an aperitif with jamón ibérico, oysters with a spicy mignonette or during dinner alongside hearty Alsatian sausage.
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.