1929 | Chateau la Mission Haut Brion

Detailed Description

A lovely, balanced wine, with good, earthy fruit flavors. Medium red-garnet color, with blackberry and earth aromas; medium-bodied, with sweet, lovely, elegant fruit and fine balance on the finish.

Reviews:

• Wine Advocate: The extraordinary 1929 vintage, which may well have been the vintage of the century, with a style that old timers compare to modern day 1982s, or more recently, the 1990s, produced wines that were wonderfully opulent and unctuous. Henri Woltner wrote that the 1929 La Mission drank fabulously well in 1933, yet he doubted its ability to age well. How wrong he was! Still deep garnet in color with only a trace of amber at the edge, this wine exhibits a fabulously exotic, sensual bouquet filled with aromas of tobacco, blackcurrants, cedar, and leather. On the palate it reveals high alcohol, as well as the remarkably sweet, rich, expansive, staggering concentration of fruit necessary to stand up to the alcohol. This is a velvety, lush, full-bodied wine that it is an incredible privilege to drink.

• Tom Cannavan: Still quite a dense colour. Big gravy browning nose, with still a lovely hint of something incense-like, with Sandalwood and spices. A core of fresh minerality still. The palate has real purity. The fruit has faded considerably now, but haunting echoes of the fruit, with exquisite structure remaining and that delicacy and precision keeping it fresh.

Producer Information

Château La Mission Haut-Brion is an estate in the Pessac-Léognan appellation in the northern Graves, a few miles southwest of Bordeaux’s city center. Its near-neighbor and sister estate Château Haut-Brion was the only estate from the region featured in the 1855 Bordeaux Classification, but La Mission Haut-Brion (rated a Graves Grand Cru in the 1959 rankings) is often judged and priced as the equal of Haut-Brion and the other first growths. The wine is particularly known for its fruit intensity, rounded, generous texture and silky tannins, and has received multiple 100-point ratings from American critic Robert Parker. La Mission Haut-Brion sees 18-22 months aging in barrel, with 80 percent new oak. Between 6000 and 7000 cases are produced each year. La Chapelle de La Mission Haut-Brion has been the second wine since 2006, when it replaced Château La Tour Haut-Brion. The estate also produces two Semillon-based white wines: La Mission Haut-Brion Blanc (formerly Laville Haut-Brion) and, since 2009, La Clarté de Haut-Brion. The latter acts as a combined second wine for La Mission Haut-Brion and Haut-Brion Blanc. The estate takes its name from the Lazarite missionaries who owned it from 1682 until the French Revolution. It has been owned since 1983 by Domaine Clarence Dillon, the owner of Haut-Brion.