$1,800 for TWO OLD BOTTLES? Tasting aged Château HAUT BRION ...
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I use this wine key: Laguiole en Aubrac Wine Key Ebony
I have used this glass in this Video: RIEDEL Performance Cabernet Sauvignon
I have tasted the following wines in this Video:
1986 Château Haut Brion Bordeaux
2011 Château Haut Brion Bordeaux
The 100 Point Scoring System (from ):
96-100: An extraordinary wine of profound and complex character displaying all the attributes expected of a classic wine of its variety. Wines of this caliber are worth a special effort to find, purchase and consume.
90 - 95: An outstanding wine of exceptional complexity and character. In short, these are terrific wines.
80 - 89: A barely above average to very good wine displaying various degrees of finesse and flavor as well as character with no noticeable flaws.
70 - 79: An average wine with little distinction except that it is soundly made. In essence, a straightforward, innocuous wine.
60 - 69: A below-average wine containing noticeable deficiencies, such as excessive acidity and/or tannin, an absence of flavor or possibly dirty aromas or flavors.
50 - 59: A wine deemed to be unacceptable.
A few months ago I did a survey on which one is your dream wine from Bordeaux and the winner was Petrus but the wine that came in second place surprised me a bit. Chateau Haut Brion is one of the most highly regarded wineries in the world and these two bottles cost around 1,800 US dollars but it is maybe not the Bordeaux winery that is most famous.
The wine is usually stellar and I thought it was a great opportunity for me to share this experience with you and explore the wine aging process. Château Haut-Brion is the oldest wine-producing estate in Bordeaux However, the beginning of its history starts far earlier
Millions of years ago, the countryside around today’s city of Bordeaux was shaped by the rivers and a small hill started to take shape. It caught the eye of the Celtic tribes who lived under Roman rule and they called it Brion Which was their word for mount or hill not knowing that it is going to become famous in the future.
The story of the chateaux began in the early 16th century, as Jean de Pontac gained the estates’ land through marriage and constructed the château in 1549. Haut-Brion, became famous as the wines were able to age and command high prices so the wine style was in high demand. King Charles II (in the – 1661 cellar book) owned 169 bottles of “Vino de Hobriono“. Samuel Pepys (1663) wrote, that he drank “sort of French wine called Ho Bryan, that hath a good and most particular taste that I never met with“.
American Thomas Jefferson, widely regarded as a man of great political and sensorial taste, visited the chateau in 1787, calling it “a specimen of what is the very best Bordeaux wine“
So it came as no surprise that some 70 years later it was formally recognized as one of the greatest chateaux in the 1855 classification
It is the only one of the (then) four premier grand cru classes that is located in Pessac-Leognan rather than Médoc. Today the American Dillon family owns the estate, which they bought in the 1930s for 2,350,000FF according to Decanter which would be 385,000 US$ - which is a joke. Today the Chateau has 51 hectares of vineyards with the vast majority planted to red grapes. Feature classical red Bordeaux varieties, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc as well as Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc.