Neither disappointed – the 1945 overwhelmingly chosen as wine of the night – glorious, complex and which continued to open up in the glass. The 1929 was sound, but lived up to its reputation for ‘weirdness’.
My luck at auction on these two rarities meant £145 bought a place for 20 of us at the table to taste our way through 1998, 1990, 1989, 1988, 1985, 1982, 1975, 1967, 1962, 1945 and 1929 – over £4000 worth at retail prices.
The stormy downpour of rain that soaked our group as they scurried into the Institute of Directors building in Pall Mall, did not dampen spirits for the wines poured.
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(Our damp but enthusiastic group of tasters)
Overall the wines all (bar ’29) expressed a style identifiable with Graves, yet each had the stamp of the vintage. The interesting thing here I thought, was the quality of the 1998 – a “right bank” vintage due to the relative success of the merlot. Though “left bank”, the 1998 Ch Haut Brion is 55% merlot, and in my view would sit happily alongside the most successful of the right bank wines for the vintage.
Yet the 1998 Ch Haut Brion is less expensive than 1998 right bank wines like Chateaux Ausone, L’Eglise Clinet, Valandraud, La Mondotte, Trotonoy, and of course Cheval Blanc, Le Pin and Pétrus. Yet here is a vineyard that pre-dates all but its Graves neighbours, and had fame when the Médoc was a marshland. Samuel Pepys even mentions the wine in 1663.
(Fame and history aside, my overall impression on value is that there is a gap between the performance of Ch Haut Brion and it’s price in the first growth stakes. Indeed, taking the average of prices for the vintages 2001 to 1990, Lafite is 13% dearer, Latour is 22% dearer and Margaux is 33% dearer. Only Mouton is cheaper and that is mainly due to that chateau’s relatively poor performance in 1990 – a year in which Ch Haut Brion was stellar.)
When we got the 1967 vintage, we really saw the quality of this property. A fairly poor vintage – one which Michael Broadbent described as ‘peroxide blonde’ – pretty at first, but showing its ‘black roots’ (heavily chaptalized musts) after a few years. The 1967 Château Haut Brion showed none of that – it was lighter than the other wines, but very sound and quite enjoyable.
The only disappointments were a maderised 1962, and a less-than-stellar 1989 and 1982. The 1990 was the clear favourite in the 1990, 1989 and 1988 trio; 1985 was preferred by a majority over the 1982. The 1975 was given broad approval – showing none of the excess tannin of so many of that vintage.
The 1929 created a bit of discussion. Neal Martin (www.wine-journal.com) had tried this before and said our bottle was very similar to what he had experienced. Here was a wine made in between the long and successful ownership by the Larrieu family, and that the age of investment from the Dillons. Ch Haut Brion’s website (http://haut-brion.com/chb/chbframeset.htm) describes the owner at the time, M. André Gibert, as having had ‘a partiality for law suits and singular experiments in wine-making’. In Vintage Wine 4th Edn., Micheal Broadbent suspects this wine as perhaps having been made from ‘heated must?’ – but certainly having a ‘curiously, consistently, stewed character’. Various descriptions were given by our tasting group – all pointing to raisined, prune-like fruit. An ‘interesting’ wine.
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It’s clear that the unbroken reign of the Delmas as regisseurs – Georges from 1923 to 1961, and the seemingly even more capable Jean from 1961 to the present day – combined with solid investment and commitment from the Dillon family as owners, has led to a run of extremely high quality wines that due full justice the chateau’s great terroir.
It was a privelage to taste these wines.
(Opening the 1945 - it's long original cork came out cleanly - amazing!) |
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