Château Haut-Brisson: Tasting & Drinking
The entire Vignobles K range is well made, the wines typically showing a modern style, with glossy textures, ripe flavour profiles, concentrated substances and tannic structures which, provided the vintage conditions have been favourable, tend to provide the wine with a mature and polished frame. Even though the property has changed hands, and is now in the possession of Stéphane Schinazi, this remains true, not least because – at the time of writing, at least – the Vignobles K team continue to manage the estate.
Of all the most recent vintages that stick in my mind it is not, strangely, one of the very successful vintages such as the 2022, 2020 or 2019. Instead it is the 2021, because in a frosted vintage – when the vines out on the St Emilion plain had been ravaged – I was expecting a fairly limp wine from Château Haut-Brisson. And yet, in the glass it presented a saturated colour, a ripe and mature aromatic profile, and for the vintage a very finely composed palate. It seemed completely incongruous. How could an estate from the sandy floodplain ever produce such a wine, even in a good vintage, never mind in 2021?
Of course, I had forgotten about the vines in Saint-Etienne-de-Lisse, on a more prestigious clay-limestone terroir, and having been protected from the frost these played a much larger part in the blend. No wonder this vintage was looking so good. Of course, the more benevolent vintages such as 2022, 2020, 2019 and 2018 were superior, but perhaps that goes without saying. This remains a name worth knowing in St Emilion, at least while Jean-Christophe Meyrou, Emmanuelle d’Aligny-Fulchi and team keep their hand on the tiller. If that should change, this property’s standing will obviously warrant reassessment. (23/8/23, updated 24/8/24)
