La Mission Haut-Brion Blanc 2018

96 points - Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, March 2021

The La Mission Haut-Brion 2018 Blanc is a blend of 57.4% Sauvignon Blanc and 42.6% Sémillon. It sashays out of the glass with gregarious notes of white peaches, fresh pears and pineapple with nuances of lime blossoms, crushed rocks and sea spray, plus a waft of beeswax. The racy, medium to full-bodied palate is charged with energy, delivering vibrant citrus and tropical fruit layers with a satiny texture and fantastic length. Completely exceeding my barrel tasting expectations, this promises to be an earlier drinking style, albeit multilayered, dripping with class and, yes, it's downright sexy. Give it just a few more months in bottle and then it should offer decadent drinking for the next 15+ years.

Domaine Clarence Dillon pretty much nailed it across the board in 2018, from the first growth(s) in Pessac to the Saint-Émilion wines; to the more humbly priced, larger volume offerings; and even the whites, which were also tricky considering the heat. All the wines are ripe and seductive, true to what 2018 wanted to give as a vintage, and yet they possess bags of bright fruit, energy and freshness. “The first key to success this vintage was to start the first mildew treatment in the vineyards a little bit earlier than usual,” Deputy Managing Director Jean-Philippe Delmas of Domaine Clarence Dillon informed me. “If you did that, you were protected. If you didn’t, you had to constantly run after the disease. The second challenge was the date of the harvest—the date was finally quite late. The best solution was to wait to get ripeness but to pick before there was heaviness or the wines got too fat.” I asked Delmas which he loved more this year, Cabernet or Merlot? “I loved everything,” he promptly replied. “And on the Right Bank, the Cabernet Franc was wonderful this year, which isn’t always the case. I would say Right Bank and Left Bank are the same for quality.” Bravo team! - Lisa Perrotti-Brown