Le Clarence de Haut Brion, Pessac Léognan, 2025
Produced from 66.5% Merlot, 28.3% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5.2% Cabernet Franc, the 2025 Clarence is initially more understated than the Chapelle, with brooding notes of crushed rocks, black fruits, sour cherry and plum. The palate is tangy and exuberant, full of vivid tayberry and salty bramble fruit, oak spice, nutmeg and underbrush supported by sculpted tannins.
critic reviews
The 2025 Le Clarence de Haut-Brion has a little more comeliness than the La Chapelle de la Mission, perhaps due to the higher percentage of Merlot (66.5%). Dark cherries, sous-bois, a touch more minéralité coming through by direct comparison. Just a very marginal ash-like scent. The palate is medium-bodied with fine-boned tannins, firm in the mouth, a tad more backbone than expected. Delineated and delivering quite a potent, granular-textured finish, you can feel the mouth tingling with red peppercorns on the aftertaste. Great potential and a very fine Deuxième Vin.
Succulent, coffee bean and cappuccino, excellent structure, high spice, beautiful grip and presence, 27hl/ha yield. Harvest September 1 to 18. 17% new oak. 3.69ph.
The 2025 Le Clarence de Haut-Brion, a blend of 66.5% Merlot, 28.3% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5.2% Cabernet Franc, reveals a floral bouquet with pronounced dark fruit, evolving toward cassis and spice with aeration. Medium- to full-bodied, dense and structured, it’s built around a deep core of fruit and has more marked freshness on the finish than La Chapelle, lending it a more ethereal profile, enhanced by menthol notes that reinforce this sense of lift. Comparable in density and structure to La Chapelle, it remains somewhat reserved at this stage and will require patience.