2002 Château La Mission Haut-Brion- France, Bordeaux, Graves, Pessac-Léognan (6/20/2021)
The level of care in the winemaking is very much apparent in this wine. The nose is savory and beguiling, both elegant and powerful with a rustic character with tertiary notes just beginning to show. The fruit profile is slightly underripe black fruit with some tart red fruit: sour cherry, black plum, red plum, cranberry with just a barely noticeable herbal green note. The secondary and tertiary notes here are quite nice with black pepper, leather, tobacco cocoa, and saline. Hold the wine in your mouth for 10 seconds or so and you will be rewarded with a crescendo of beautiful baking spice. Acid, tannin, alcohol and body are in perfect balance. 2002 was a cooler vintage in Bordeaux, and if there was one thing I would change here it would be to dial up the intensity of fruit just a bit. 3-4 hours of air is recommended as it helps the fruit to come to life. It was a treat to drink this wine and I hope to be able to compare this to a riper vintage one day soon. (92 pts.)
Agreed. At the top end there are some really classically balanced wines that are putting on weight as they age and which remain youthful today. Drank Haut Brion 2002 on Friday and it was brilliant after four hours in the decanter.
We didn’t really do it by design, there were just too many wines to get through before. But, on opening, the wine certainly wasn’t anywhere near as fleshy or textural as it became; and if at the start it would have been possible to miss its quality, by the end, it wasn’t.
All this is making me look at some mags of 2002 Latour quite seriously… dangerous thread.