| Graves Bordeaux Consistently one of my favorite second wines is Bahans-Haut-Brion. The 2000 offers a tangy, ripe, red and black currant-scented perfume with earth and lead pencil notes in the background. It possesses elegance, purity, a round, medium-bodied, sweet attack, fine balance, and a nicely-knit finish. This wine should drink well for 10-12 years, possibly longer. Rated 89-90 Robert Parker Lovely raspberry and mineral aromas. Full-bodied, with ripe tannins and lots of jammy fruit. Score range: 89-91 Wine Spectator The second wine of a field is not the product of a place known as of particular pieces. It comes from the same soil as the high-class wine, it has of it the same origin, the same personality, the same characteristics, the same originality. But the high-class wine is the research of best and the second wine does not have the power of it nor complexity. The second wine is the high-class wine in small-scale model. It is necessary to make the difference between a second wine and a second vintage, or another vintage. To in no case there cannot be two castles or two vintages on the same soil. But in the same soil, one can select two levels of quality, for example a first and a second wine. Thus, a second wine does not have own history, it does not have a clean geographical identity: it has that of the high-class wine. Bahans perpetuates the memory of a family, Bahans, which had at the XIXème century of the vines with Pessac with the Haut-Brion locality. Very great vintage was formed little by little during centuries by research, then the acquisition of the best pieces of the place where it is. This selective and quantitative research gradually made it possible to form the soil of the great vintage. The pieces which belonged to the Bahans family constitute to some extent the soil of Haut-Brion. It is thus in remembering this family of large wine growers, which exists always today in another activity, that the Second Wine of the Haut-Brion Castle carries the name of Bahans. |
