The purity of fruit in this white is phenomenal. It’s like looking through a thin, perfectly clear crystal. Aromas of sliced apples, lemons, fresh pineapples and lilacs. Full body but perfectly balanced between fruit and acidity. Mineral and intense. Lightly salty and bitter like a peach pit. Electrifying wine. Greatest white ever from here. It lasts for minutes on the palate. 73% sauvignon blanc and 27% sémillon.

Offers a subtle brioche frame, with paraffin, verbena, lemon zest, white peach and chamomile notes. Gains steam through the finish, delivering a light kiss of toast. Long and alluring, this shows a white Burgundy-like ability to age, gaining richness and hints of white truffle along the way. Drink now through 2026. – JM

A few years ago, one hectare of semillon here was grubbed up and replanted to sauvignon blanc. 2011 is the first vintage to include that young vine sauvignon blanc fruit in the La Mission Blanc. This is the ripest white wine I encountered from this vintage, at a heady 14.6 percent alcohol. The nose is deep, pretty and very suave in its mélange of grapefruit, fresh fig, citrus peel, cut grass, complex soil tones and vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, pure and impressively complex on the finish, with a very good core, but a finish that shows some of its heady octane as uncovered alcohol. The heat on the backend is pretty minor and I expect many people will not even notice it, but it suggests strongly that drinking this tasty and complex wine in its youth will be obligatory. I wonder what was the alcohol level on the brilliant 1964 Laville Haut Brion I drank a short time ago- 11.5 percent? But, those days are gone forever- I should just let them go... The 2011 La Mission Blanc is very good juice for early drinking.

27.1% Sauvignon Blanc, 72.9% Sémillon. Clear and citrusy on the nose, zesty and aromatic – grapefruit and greengage. A little less intense in the middle perhaps, or maybe it seems so because the attack and finish are powerful. So much spice, it almost feels like spritz. Lovely creamy texture and very rich, hiding the acidity though it is clearly brightly there. A real fine spine down the middle. Really long and so not ready to drink. 17.5/20 (JH)