Scores
92+
Robert Parker
More closed and shy than La Chapelle de la Mission Haut-Brion, the 2021 Le Clarence de Haut-Brion offers up a delicate, complex bouquet with aromas of plums, spices, lead pencil, licorice and dark berries. Medium to full-bodied with a structuring core of fruit, it’s seamless and vibrant with a long, penetrating finish. Keep it over the next decade.
91
Vinous
The 2021 Le Clarence de Haut-Brion has held on to the more floral, violet-tinged bouquet that puts it in front of the La Chapelle de la Mission at this stage - it's just a little more enticing. The palate is medium-bodied with pliant tannins, fleshier than the La Chapelle with a caressing and delineated finish. It is an excellent Deuxième Vin that will give 12 to 15 years' drinking pleasure.
92
Decanter
Dark chocolate and red cherries on the nose, so aromatic, rich and seductive. Joyful and lifted on the palate, strawberries and plums to the fore but creamy and chalky with such a sappy, agile and lively energy. Lightly framed so you get the aerial expansion of flavour but the texture that grips is chalky and mineral giving a welcome salinity and touch of tobacco and smoke that lands on the tongue. Beautifully presented, smooth and well defined, such succulence and density with no let up through the palate. Intensity, clarity and focus. An excellent second wine in 2021.