Winemaker Notes
This wine is very beautiful deep garnet-red color with a complex, charming bouquet featuring roasted and toasty aromas as well as hints of black fruit and vanilla. Elegant, concentrated, powerful and well-balanced on the palate. It has a long aftertaste with remarkably smooth tannins and is a great wine with fine aging potential that will richly reward patience.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Deep and slightly spicy black cherries and blackberries with leafy nuances. The palate has a very pure, lively core of cassis. Full body and deep flavors of blue plums. Try from 2021.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Loads of ripe black cherries, plums, bouquet garni, truffle and forest floor emerge from the glass of the deep purple color 2015 Château Larrivet Haut-Brion. With a full, layered, concentrated profile, ripe tannin, and a great, great finish, it’s a seriously good Pessac-Leognan that’s capable of holding for 15-20 years.
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Decanter
Rich dark chocolate and damson coulis nose – fruit over finesse. It’s a touch heavy with the ripe fruit but still very pleasurable. 62% Cabernet Sauvignon, 33% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium garnet-purple in color, the 2015 Larrivet Haut-Brion offers up fragrant notes of crushed raspberries, Bing cherries and red plums with hints of baking spices, black tea and potpourri plus a touch of crushed rocks. Medium-bodied and vibrantly fruited in the mouth with impressive energy and tension, it has a soft, silky frame and finishes on a lingering perfumed note.
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Wine Spectator
Enticing, with vibrant raspberry and red currant coulis fruit liberally laced with singed alder and dried anise notes. Flashes of rooibos tea and incense weave through as well. A light tarry thread on the finish adds range. Drink now through 2027.
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.