Winemaker Notes
Blend: 100% Sauvignon Blanc
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
This is the best ‘just crack on and drink it’ white wine in Bordeaux in my opinion. Made from 100% Sauvignon Blanc, it’s so full of exotic fruits and fragrant white flowers, with seductive aromatics. Juicy and mouthwatering, easy to enjoy.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 Les Hauts de Smith Blanc is 100% Sauvignon Blanc and offers up intense notions of lemon curd, white peaches and grapefruit with touches of mandarin peel, jasmine and lime zest. The palate is medium-bodied and incredibly elegant yet super zippy in the mouth, with a lively line cutting through the intense citrus flavors, finishing long and zesty.
Barrel Sample: 90-92 -
Wine Enthusiast
Ripe Sémillon gives this wine a full, rich character. Acidity is well integrated into hints of minerality and green fruits. Lemon and pink grapefruit vie with the richer white fruits, combining in a harmonious whole at the end. Drink now
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Jeb Dunnuck
Made from 100% Sauvignon Blanc, the 2017 Les Hautes de Smith Blanc is crisp and fresh, with lively green herbs, lime, and citrus aromas and flavors. Beautifully balanced and upfront and already hard to resist, it’s a terrific – possibly outstanding – Bordeaux Blanc.
Barrel Sample: 89-91 -
James Suckling
Purity and freshness to this with sliced lemons, green apples and some pears. Medium body. Crisp acidity and a clean, bright finish. 100% sauvignon blanc. So delicious now. Why wait?
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Wine Spectator
Plump but lively, with lemon and gooseberry gelée flavors, lined with verbena and honeysuckle notes. Bright finish. Drink now through 2022.
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.