1995 Château Haut-Brion
Community Tasting Note
Rote Kappelle Likes this wine:
Saturday, August 12, 2023 - Yes folks, this gets the full Annette with stiffy clusters. A quick Google search suggests Rebecca Bardoux might be the Bordeaux equivalent of the Rhenish Annette, or might it be algorithmic spelling issues? Well, Rebecca appears to be rather chic and nicely built, so she will do. She also seems like the sort of gal who will always be nice.
The thing with really fine Bordeaux is that is, well, really fine. No 75 gigaton blast of baked fruit and oak staves here. It can be easy to open and think 'oh! Is that it then?'. Of course, unless you are a really obtuse swine, you then find yourself drawn back despite yourself and you start to see the amazing layers and the beauty. Hegel loved Haut Brion and one can see why.
The wine is brick red, but the colour misleads. This is not tired, or even fully mature. The very best years of this wine still lie a few years ahead, cork and cellar conditions allowing.
It is important to note that this wine evolves enormously over time open and decanted. The wine you get at first does seem fully mature and a few hours later you would also say the tannins are fully resolved. Yet at 5 hours the wine is freshening up and tightening up.
The nose is a compote of dark and red fruits, truffles, a little smoke, pepper and spice. Depending on when you smell this, the proportions will change but the elements themselves are fairly consistent.
The 1995 vintage was a bit like 1975; coming after a series of horrid ones it got rave reviews at first, simply because it was not awful. However, with time came the realisation that a lot of 1995's had mean tannins and the vintage, properly considered was not great, but was good, provided one chose carefully. Haut Brion bucked this trend by producing a spectacular wine. It was feted then and it still is.
Pay attention to the layers on the palate, because this is one of the things I find beguiling about this wine. The fine architecture of wine.
This is string quartet music. Late Beethoven, perhaps. We can argue about Opus 131 or 133. Schubert asked to hear 131 before he died and Wagner described it in glowing terms, but I am with Stravinsky and it is the 'Grosse Fugue' that calls to me and that seems the perfect accompaniment for this wine. Please do listen to these two extraordinary pieces of music as you drink this wine, because combined they open doors.
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