Château Les Carmes Haut-Brion
Château Les Carmes Haut Brion, Pessac Léognan, 2020
97/100
Inside Bordeaux
97/100
Robert Parker Wine Advocate
98/100
The Wine Independent
95/100
Vinous
Available Vintages
Broking
2020
6x75cl
DP
£585.53
Justerini & Brooks Tasting note
These suburban vineyards comprised of Mindel gravels on clay and limestone are planted with 39% Cabernet Franc, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon and 41% Merlot. Guillaume described it as 'a vintage of convictions'. They continued with 55% whole bunch fermentations, which reduces the alcohol content and adds a sapidity. The nose offers aromas of creamy, dark cherry notes, clay, incense and crème de mûre. There’s great intensity to the palate, pure, silky, lovely chewy texture to the fruit, full of blackberries and minerals. The tannins envelope the dark mineral core weaving a gloriously detailed finale laced with Valrhona chocolate and Chambord. This really grows in stature as it unfurls in the glass. Unique and utterly intriguing. Produced from 40% Cabernet Franc, 34% Cabernet Sauvignon and 26% Merlot aged in 80% new French oak, 11% foudres and 9% amphora
delivery information
GUARANTEED PROVENANCE
DELIVERY
How much is delivery
Delivery is free to mainland Great Britain and other bonded warehouses for orders over £200 (inc. VAT) in value. For orders under the value of £200 destined for mainland Great Britain there is a delivery charge of £18 (inc. VAT).
All deliveries to mainland Great Britain coming from Cellarers will incur a delivery charge of £24 (inc. VAT). Cellarers Storage Charges.
Where are the wines stored and are they fully insured whilst in storage?
We store clients’ wines with a subsidiary company called Cellarers (Wines) Ltd, which is wholly owned by Justerini & Brooks but where clients’ wines are segregated from our own stock. The wines are stored at Octavian's industry-leading underground cellars in Corsham, Wiltshire, UK. All wines stored with Cellarers are individually labelled with clients’ details and are insured to current market value.
Can I ship outside of mainland Great Britain?
We offer regular shipments to Hong Kong from £90 per 9L case and £62 per 4.5L case. A discounted rate of £72 per 9L case may apply when shipping five or more cases to one address. Deliveries usually take approximately three weeks.
For deliveries to destinations other than mainland Great Britain or Hong Kong, please contact the Customer Relationship Team via email on justbrooksorders@justerinis.com for a quote.
Why can’t I request delivery of certain wines?
Most often, the reason you cannot request delivery of certain wines is that they are still ‘En Primeur’ and not yet in the country. Once they land in the UK, they will be available for Duty Paid Delivery. Click here for more information on buying En Primeur.
GUARANTEED PROVENANCE
Provenance in fine wine
When it comes to purchasing wine, provenance is of utmost importance. A wine’s history – where it’s sourced from and how it’s been stored – can have an enormous influence on the eventual enjoyment it provides. At Justerini & Brooks, we can trace nearly every case back to the domaine, estate or Château it originally came from; we ship from over 200 wine producers throughout the world.
Wines not bought directly from the vineyard are either sourced from trusted suppliers, with whom we share the same philosophy and rigour in buying, or from our own network of Cellarers customers. These customers’ wines are stored in optimal conditions in Octavian Corsham and, in the vast majority of cases, have been stored by us since the wine was first shipped. We do not purchase wine from auctions.
We feel it is equally important to for our customers that the case they buy and leave in storage with us is exactly the same case they subsequently have delivered. This may sound obvious and straightforward, yet we are one of very few merchants to have taken measures to ensure this.
We have created a system where every case is independent, thereby ensuring a trail of ownership and peace of mind for every customer.
The Journey
Justerinis ensures that every case of wine stored with Cellarers (Wines) Ltd has a unique identifier and customer’s name, almost unheard of in the industry as it is expensive to administer. These details are printed and placed on every case which is logged and recorded under your account name and kept in the world’s most renowned storage facility, Octavian Corsham.
This information is sent from our systems to the warehouse every day to ensure the trail of ownership is verified and upheld.
While customer reserves are stored in Corsham, our physical stocks are kept in Hoddesdon, further providing a geographical separation between customers’ wines with Cellarers and Justerinis’ own stock.
Further Reassurance
Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is a legally separate limited company from Justerini & Brooks which currently holds approximately £450 million worth of customer reserves. It is fully insured to catastrophic loss. Many merchants will state that wine in their care is fully insured, but in reality this is on an individual case basis with insufficient cover for total loss as this is prohibitively expensive. The cover provided by Octavian and Justerini & Brooks is unmatched.
Cellarers (Wines) Ltd is audited by PwC every year.
Critic Reviews
95/100
Neal Martin,
Vinous
The 2020 Les Carmes Haut-Brion has an opulent bouquet of black cherries, blueberries and violets, with just a patina of new oak to be fully subsumed. The palate is medium-bodied with fleshy, ripe tannins. Very well balanced, it's quite a lascivious Pessac-Léognan, with a caressing and very peppery finish. Certainly, this represents one of the best vintages in the modern era under Guillaume Pouthier. Tasted blind at the annual Southwold tasting.
drinking window 2028 - 2055
date of review 11/2024
97/100
William Kelley,
Robert Parker Wine Advocate
The 2020 Les Carmes Haut-Brion has turned out beautifully, wafting from the glass with aromas of blackberries, red fruits, exotic spices, rose petals, raw cocoa and licorice. Medium to full-bodied, seamless and layered, it's intensely flavored but weightless, with a compelling sense of harmony and a long, orange-inflected finish. A blend of 40% Cabernet Franc, 34% Cabernet Sauvignon and 26% Merlot, it was vinified with some 65% whole bunch and attained 13.5% alcohol. This is the first vintage where Pouthier's methods (whole bunch with weighted cap and long elevage incorporating larger vessels) were applied writ large, and the results are striking.
drinking window 2025 - 2055
date of review 04/2023
98/100
Lisa Perrotti-Brown,
The Wine Independent
The 2020 Les Carmes Haut-Brion is a blend of 40% Cabernet Franc, 34% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 26% Merlot with a pH of 3.62 and aged for 24 months in 80% new oak, 11% foudres, and 9% terracotta amphoras. A proportion of whole-bunch fermentation was used, depending on the suitability of the batch: 50-60% whole bunch was generally used on the Merlot and Cabernet Franc, less on the Cabernet Sauvignon. Deep garnet-purple in color, it slowly releases the most gorgeous perfume of violets, dark chocolate, black cherry preserves, and creme de cassis, followed by suggestions of crushed rocks, tar, wild sage, and anise. The medium-bodied palate delivers a solid foundation of firm, grainy tannins and seamless freshness to support the tight-knit black fruit and mineral layers, finishing long and perfumed.
drinking window 2028 - 2065
date of review 03/2023
97/100
Jane Anson,
Inside Bordeaux
Inky plum colour, violet and peony aromatics followed up by orange zest and pencil lead on the opening beats. Just so much depth, quality and characte, chalky tannins are softening just enough to show the form of the fruit bneath, giving a sense of architecture and form. Sculpted blue and black fruits appear as things expand through the mid palate, with crushed mint leaf and mouthwatering oyster shell on the finish. The flavours evolve and the character emerges the longer you linger over this glass, and it's an excellent vintage of Carmes, with sculpted delicous fruits. 3.58ph, 55% whole cluster, 80% new oak, 10% foudres, 10% amohora for ageing.
drinking window 2028 - 2048
date of review 02/2023
product details
Specifications
allergen information
This product may contain sulphites. Full allergen information is available upon request, please call our Customer Relations Team on +44 (0)20 7484 6430.
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