TN: La Mission Haut-Brion 1989

[dteng]

Victor,
Must be nice to be rich…

[Roger_Nellans]

@Jeff Leve

@Steve Saxon

@Jeff Leve

At 21 years of age, it’s all about the bottle and not the wine. Your experience could be better or worse. My two most recent tastings of this wine were sublime.

FWIW, IMO 89 LMHB is a better wine than the 82. My best guess is, 2000 & 2005 are both going to be better than the 89.

99 points - Tasted Jul 2, 2010
Served blind at Chateau La Mission Haut Brion over dinner - Cigar, ash, minerals, earth, cassis, tar, leather black fruit, hot stones and freshly ground coffee beans open up the aromatic fireworks. This dense elixir is packed and stacked with layers of rich, intense, ripe dark fruit. The tannins feel ripe. But this wine is tannic and requires more bottle age than Haut Brion. The wine finishes with an intense display of ripe, spicy black fruit, cassis and fresh dark cherries.

99 points - Tasted Jun 18, 2009
Cassis, tobacco, chocolate, plums, smoke, and licorice with dark berry aromatics are all over the place. Full bodied with intense levels of concentration, this is one of those rare thrill a sip wines. Dense, opulent, rich, and fat, this wine tastes great, pouring over every inch, every nook and cranny, of your mouth. The seamless finish goes on and on with an endless array of palate pleasing, sensations. Still young, it will get better over the next several decades.

Jeff IYO how does the 89 compare to the 75? I have a mag of the 75.

Steve… The 89 blows away the 75! The 75 has great aromatics as well as concentration, but the style of the wine is hard. It’s an austere wine that lacks the elegance and charm found in the sublime 89. I have two bottles of the 75 LMHB remaining and I’m waiting at least another decade before popping one. As you have a mag, do you have grandchildren yet?

Jeff, I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the 61 LMHB. I recently had my lone bottle that had been sitting in my cellar for 35 years. Two weeks later, I opened a 61 Latour and I must say it was no contest. The LMHB blew the socks off of the Latour. It was right up there for my WOTY of 2009 ( there were a couple of burgundies in the running ) . I gave the wine a perfect 100. My CT note " Wow, wow, wow!! Perfection. Unanimous choice of wine of the night. Huge nose of tobacco, smoke, roasted ripe fruit. Very concentrated, rich sweet, soft with soft tannins. Extremely long finish…it just goes on and on. This wine will last many more years." I’d be interested in your thoughts comparing this wine to the 89.

[Jurgen_Steinke]

It´s the bottle. I had 1989 LMHB about a dozen times and this is often a perfect wine. But I had bottles either that weren´t mind blowing - for weather reason I don´t know exactely.

Something I learned over the years: If the cork doesn´t smell like wine or smell neutral I am always a bit concerned. I guess the number of bottles that slightly suffer from an not ideal cork compared to the obviously TCA infected bottles is way bigger. A not ideal cork can make an outstanding wine to an average one. The same phenomenon if you pull a bottle from a very cold cellar and let it warm up in a decanter. It´s not the same quality as if the wine had 2 days of warming up to 16/17 degrees C. The best is the wine rested a week in a Chambrair at 16 d. C, is decanted for an hour and the temperature in the room is not more than 20 d C.

[Jeff_Leve]

@Roger Nellans

@Jeff Leve

@Steve Saxon

Jeff IYO how does the 89 compare to the 75? I have a mag of the 75.

Steve… The 89 blows away the 75! The 75 has great aromatics as well as concentration, but the style of the wine is hard. It’s an austere wine that lacks the elegance and charm found in the sublime 89. I have two bottles of the 75 LMHB remaining and I’m waiting at least another decade before popping one. As you have a mag, do you have grandchildren yet?

Jeff, I’m surprised that no one has mentioned the 61 LMHB. I recently had my lone bottle that had been sitting in my cellar for 35 years. Two weeks later, I opened a 61 Latour and I must say it was no contest. The LMHB blew the socks off of the Latour. It was right up there for my WOTY of 2009 ( there were a couple of burgundies in the running ) . I gave the wine a perfect 100. My CT note " Wow, wow, wow!! Perfection. Unanimous choice of wine of the night. Huge nose of tobacco, smoke, roasted ripe fruit. Very concentrated, rich sweet, soft with soft tannins. Extremely long finish…it just goes on and on. This wine will last many more years." I’d be interested in your thoughts comparing this wine to the 89.

Roger… Posters have not mentioned the 61 because very few people have tasted it. I am sure Ray T could share his impressions on the wine. Sadly I’ve never experienced the 61. I’ve had Haut Brion several times, but not La Mission. I imagine it’s off the hook.

[Ray.Tuppa_sch]

'61 LMHB is off the charts. I’ve been lucky/fortunate to have had great consistency with this wine. As great as '61 HB can be, I think the better bottles of the La Mission are superior.
However, the '61 LMHB is not my favorite or what I consider to be the best La Mission. For me '55 La Mission Haut Brion is a notch above and would probably be my favorite Bordeaux I’ve ever drank not from the right bank.

[Victor_Hong]

@dteng

Victor,
Must be nice to be rich…

Did you ever drink that second (non-frozen) shipment of Giscours 2000? Must be nice to be afford 2000 Bordeaux Slurpies. But, then, at your $31/bottle cost, why worry?

[Bill_Boykin]

The 61 is right there with the 82 and 89 IMO,just that the 61 is drinking more spectacularly in its prime than the younger brothers.Never had the 55…sounds enticing.
Agreed that the 75,while attractive for some palates,has lost its lustre for me and is just too harsh and austere with subdued fruit.
Can’t pick a favorite between the 82 and 89…just different expressions of LMHB magic…

[M.Kaplan]

My oldest friend’s family has been in the wine business since I was very young and, as a result, I started drinking great wine while in my teens. Really great wine. The bottle that rang my chimes and got me hooked on fine wine was a magnum of '61 LMHB consumed at our 26th or 27th birthday celebrations (I forget which) in 1980 or '81. Quite simply, the best wine I’d ever tasted up to that point in my life and at the pinnacle of what I’ve tasted since.

[Pasquale_De_Marco]

@Ray.Tuppatsch

However, the '61 LMHB is not my favorite or what I consider to be the best La Mission. For me '55 La Mission Haut Brion is a notch above and would probably be my favorite Bordeaux I’ve ever drank not from the right bank.

Interesting. I had the 1955 La Mission once in 1995 in a flight with the 1955 Mouton and 1955 Latour. They were pretty close in quality. The La Mission was better but not by that much. It showed a bit younger and maybe just a bit richer.

I’d be happy to have any one of them now out of Magnum but I have not won the lottery so I don’t think it will happen.

Pat

[Roger_Nellans]

@Pasquale De Marco

@Ray.Tuppatsch

However, the '61 LMHB is not my favorite or what I consider to be the best La Mission. For me '55 La Mission Haut Brion is a notch above and would probably be my favorite Bordeaux I’ve ever drank not from the right bank.

Interesting. I had the 1955 La Mission once in 1995 in a flight with the 1955 Mouton and 1955 Latour. They were pretty close in quality. The La Mission was better but not by that much. It showed a bit younger and maybe just a bit richer.

I’d be happy to have any one of them now out of Magnum but I have not won the lottery so I don’t think it will happen.

Pat

I have a mag of the 55 mouton if someone else brings the other two!

[craig_v]

The '61 I tasted around 2 yrs ago was one of the best wines I’ve ever had or…will have. Amazing WOW wine. The '98 is pretty darn good too.