Checking in as 90% Sauvignon Blanc, 5% Sauvignon Gris, and 5% Semillon, the 2023 Château Smith Haut Lafitte Blanc is just gorgeous, offering white peach, honeyed orange, brioche, mint, and chalky minerality on the nose. It's medium to full-bodied on the palate and has bright acidity, a lively, elegant mouthfeel, and a great, salty finish that makes you salivate. It will benefit from 4-5 years of bottle age and have two decades of prime drinking. Drink 2028-2045.

Another exceptional vintage for Smith-Haut-Lafite Blanc. It’s so complex and structured, offering a palate that feels similar to the texture of a red wine with a velvety tannin structure. There’s a lot going on here. Spice, crushed seashell and citrus blossom. Salty, too. Weightless and so long. 90% sauvignon blanc, 5% sauvignon gris and 5% semillon.

The 2023 Smith Haut Lafitte Blanc was picked from August 23 to September 9 at 36hL/ha and matured in 50% new oak. It has a reticent bouquet at first requiring a few swirls of the glass to reveal touches of orange pith peach skin wild fennel and light pressed white flower scents. The palate is very well balanced with a lovely creamy texture counterbalanced by the taut line of acidity. Very poised and focused it's somehow almost Corton-Charlemagne-inspired on the finish (perhaps due to the umami). This is a seriously fine white Pessac-Léognan.

Aromas of white fruits, crisp orchard fruits, spices, smoke, spring flowers and pear introduce the 2023 Smith Haut Lafitte Blanc, a medium to full-bodied, layered and textured wine with a fleshy core of fruit and racy acids, concluding with a mineral, fresh and long finish highlighted by delicate notes of thyme and garrigue. Comprising 50% Sauvignon Blanc, 5% Sémillon and 5% Sauvignon Gris and matured in 50% new oak, this blend is among the finest white wines produced at this address.

The 2023 Smith Haut Lafitte Blanc is quite the extrovert. Apricot passion fruit mint tangerine peel and pineapple all soar out of the glass. Medium in body with gorgeous texture the 2023 is quite showy. I imagine it will drink well with minimal cellaring. 2026 - 2037