1955 Château Haut-Brion

Community Tasting Notes (41) Avg Score: 95.1 points

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  9/23/2023 - Eric wrote:

  Jason's birthday and old Bordeaux (Newcastle, WA): Smoky chicory and ashtray. Some people were thrown by the overt smokiness, but to me this was prototypical Haut Brion. Holy wow, this is brawny, dark and brooding. It kept opening with time and on a later pour.

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  7/17/2022 - Cailles wrote: 93 Points

  16 Mature Bordeaux Magnums 1945/47/55/59 (+Unico): Three 1955s, all from magnum. Clear winner and red WOTN was the Cheval Blanc (97+ pts). Incredible complex, ever changing, a beautiful fruit core, sensual Cheval caramel and toasty components, all embedded in a flawless structure. Second place for Haut Brion (93 pts). Not the best bottle with the smoke/cured meat notes being too dominating. Still, the substance and tension of this wine are impressive. Lastly, 1955 isn‘t a particularly strong year for Margaux (91 pts) and although this bottle was better than my last, which was dead, this bottle had not enough complexity, precision, not elegance to fully convince.
  
  TN: Dark and heavily smokey nose. On the palate this has the same aromatics with loads of smoke and cured meat, tar and dark berries only in the background.You can sense that the wine has much more in store but it‘s all too dominated by the heavy smokey note. Hence, the wine is intense, precise but not as complex as the Cheval 1955 in the next glass. The structural frame is impeccable with ultra fine tannins, medium acidity, creamy texture, light yet powerful. Probably not the best bottle of HB 1955, still a good wine, although clearly more intellectually than hedonistically appealing, missing a fruit core/sweetness to be balanced enough.
  
  Decanting: Double decanted 3+ hours before the tasting.

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  7/2/2022 - sirpat00 wrote: 95 Points

  Richter Magnum Rarity Tasting (Zunfthaus zur Waag, Zurich): Tasted at a grand magnum rarities tasting hosted by a merchant and collector in Zurich. Most bottles were Bordeaux from the 40s and 50s. The top 3 wines 1. Cheval Blanc 1955 (98), 2. Ausone 1959 (97), 3. Haut-Brion 1955 (95). Full list of wines sorted by score and additional observations included in the tasting story.
  
  Tasting notes
  Layered aging notes, espresso and roasted coffee beans, dark and red cherry and leather. Palate has good depth and tension with a long finish. Voluptuous and drinking really well now.

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  7/2/2022 - G_H wrote: 93 Points

  Annual Richter All-Magnum Extravaganza: A nice mature bordeaux, with quite some typical Pessac notes some grilled porcini, iodine, a tad rough on the nose with a balanced slightly sweet palate. Absolutely a good mature wine, but for me it kind of lacked substance and depth to be considered a great mature Haut Brion, I have to say I was slightly disappointed given my love for old HB, but the tasting notes are in line with a bottle I had 6 years ago

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  12/9/2021 - joshabramson Does not like this wine:

  Poured from a 375ml: this wasn’t corked or heat damaged, it just tasted old. This was not a great bottle, sadly.

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