Chateau Les Carmes Haut-Brion 2009
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James
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Robert
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Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Blend: 45% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Franc, 15% Cabernet Sauvignon
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Spicy wood here,with stewed pear and ginger, as well as fine berry fruits. The wine is solid, but elegant, with great ripe fruits.
Barrel Sample: 92-94 -
James Suckling
Round and friendly, with soft and velvety tannins and delicious plum, spice and meaty aromas and flavors. Juicy finish. Subtle and rich. Better in 2016.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Beautiful, Burgundian-like aromas of burning embers, roasted Provencal herbs, black currants and sweet cherries and raspberries emerge from this medium-bodied, elegant 2009 Pessac-Leognan. Medium to full-bodied and seductive with sweet tannins as well as a surprisingly evolved, precocious personality (even for a 2009), it will offer delicious drinking over the next 15+ years. This is another wine in which I noticed subtle bottle variation.
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Wine Spectator
Still youthfully tight, this shows a packed core of plum, cassis and blackberry fruit wrapped with bittersweet cocoa, tobacco and charcoal notes. Nice drive marks the finish, with gorgeous polish, as a mouthwatering linzer torte note expands as it opens in the glass. Drink now through 2020.
Other Vintages
2022-
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Jeb
Dunnuck - Vinous
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James
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James
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Jeb
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Jeb
Dunnuck - Vinous
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James
Suckling -
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Spectator - Decanter
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Robert
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Connoisseurs'
Guide
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Wine
Enthusiast -
James
Suckling -
Wine
Spectator -
Robert
Parker
In 1584, he therefore donated a water-mill, surrounded by meadows and wines, to the Carmelites of Haut-Brion.
The Friars kept the name "Haut-Brion" for 200 years, before common usage gradually changed it into "Carmes Haut-Brion".
It was bought at the beginning of the last century by Léon Colin, a wine negociant in Bordeaux and a direct ancestor of the current owners, the Chantecaille-Furt family.
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
Recognized for its superior reds as well as whites, Pessac-Léognan on the Left Bank claims classified growths for both—making it quite unique in comparison to its neighboring Médoc properties.
Pessac’s Chateau Haut-Brion, the only first growth located outside of the Médoc, is said to have been the first to conceptualize fine red wine in Bordeaux back in the late 1600s. The estate, along with its high-esteemed neighbors, La Mission Haut-Brion, Les Carmes Haut-Brion, Pique-Caillou and Chateau Pape-Clément are today all but enveloped by the city of Bordeaux. The rest of the vineyards of Pessac-Léognan are in clearings of heavily forested area or abutting dense suburbs.
Arid sand and gravel on top of clay and limestone make the area unique and conducive to growing Sémillon and Sauvignon blanc as well as the grapes in the usual Left Bank red recipe: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and miniscule percentages of Petit Verdot and Malbec.
The best reds will show great force and finesse with inky blue and black fruit, mushroom, forest, tobacco, iodine and a smooth and intriguing texture.
Its best whites show complexity, longevity and no lack of exotic twists on citrus, tropical and stone fruit with pronounced floral and spice characteristics.