CHATEAU LA MISSION-HAUT-BRION Rouge. Pessac-Leognan 2008 Bottle

Description

La Mission Haut-Brion 2008 is a remarkable wine, receiving high praise including 96+ points from Vinous and 95 points from The Wine Advocate. Vinous describes its lively bouquet with aromas of blackberry, briary notes, cedar, and a hint of seaweed. The palate is beautifully balanced, showcasing fresh acidity and a focused structure, making it exceptionally convincing. The Wine Advocate highlights its expressive character, with notes of blackberries, blackcurrants, smoke, and truffle, revealing a muscular texture with ripe, powdery tannins. Wine Enthusiast awarded it 95 points, commending its dark concentration and complex layers. Decanter praises its elegant, fresh profile, with crushed raspberry fruits and smoky nuances. This vintage promises excellent ageing potential through 2026 and beyond.

*****

VINOUS 96+ points
Drinking Window 2020 - 2055
From: 2008 Bordeaux: A Day In A Life (Feb 2018)
The 2008 La Mission Haut-Brion has an open, feisty, lively bouquet with blackberry, briary, cedar, black olive and a light seaweed (Japanese nori) aroma. This is wonderful, an intoxicating bouquet. The palate is beautifully balanced with a fine bead of acidity, very focused with good weight and structure. This is a very convincing showing, at the moment more pleasurable than the 2008 Haut-Brion, just so fresh and complex, offering a discrete tertiary, smoke-tinged finish that goes on and on. One of the best 2008s out there. (Tasted at BI Wine & Spirit’s annual 10-Year On tasting.) - By Neal Martin on February 2018

THE WINE ADVOCATE 95 points
Drink Date 2026 - 2056
Reviewed by William Kelley, Issue Date 28th Feb 2022, Source Issue 259 End of February 2022, The Wine Advocate
"The 2006 La Mission Haut-Brion is showing very well at age 15, and even though it's still five or six years away from the beginning of its plateau of maturity, it is already quite expressive, wafting from the glass with aromas of blackberries and blackcurrants mingled with notions of smoke, cigar wrapper, black truffle and loamy soil. Full-bodied, fleshy and muscular, with a richly layered core of fruit framed by an abundance of ripe, powdery tannin, in a blind tasting I suspect many would confuse it with a 2005."

WINE ENTHUSIAST 95 points
Dark and concentrated, this is a powerhouse of flavors and dense tannins. It's a wonderful combination of velvet texture and dry structure. Layered, complex, wood and spice already showing signs of integration, but certainly set for the long haul. — Roger Voss

DECANTER 94 points
Tasted by: Jane Anson
(at BI, London, 01 Jan 2018)
Part of How Bordeaux 2008 wines taste now: 70 top names rated
Drinking Window: 2020 - 2036
Elegant and fresh, with beautiful crushed raspberry fruits - proof that 2008 is a vintage where terroir wins out. This all happens on the retro-olfaction: there you are thinking it's a little under-perfumed for a Mission, but then it kicks back with a smoky swirl through the palate and the aromatics take hold. It's very good, showing savoury black fruits on the finish and the gentlest hint of cigar box and cedar oak.

JANCIS ROBINSON 17++ points
Heady green, sappy aromas. Blackcurrant fruit and spice too, albeit less obviously than the herbal scent. Then, the palate gives way to more primary fruit, and it is still seems to be in the first flush of youth. Much more development is surely in store. Plenty of tannin to go the distance too. (RH)

JAMES SUCKLING 93 points
Fascinating aromas of crushed berry, plums, sweet tobacco and stones. Full bodied, with chewy and velvety tannins and a long, long finish. This is very structured and rich with a bright and tangy acidity. Needs time to come together, obviously. Try after 2015.