Pessac-Léognan · vintage 2010
Château Smith Haut-Lafitte 2010
Ageing potential20 years and more
Why this vintage
- 100/100 from Jeb Dunnuckand 2 other scores above 90/100.
- The 2010 vintage in Pessac-LéognanA dry summer and cool nights concentrated small berries: a benchmark vintage, with dense tannins and a thirty-year aging potential.
- Ageing potential20 years and more
Critic scores
- Jeb Dunnuck100
- Vinous95
- Decanter95
The 2010 vintage in Pessac-Léognan
Vintage benchmark: 99/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)
Vintage character: A dry summer and cool nights concentrated small berries: a benchmark vintage, with dense tannins and a thirty-year aging potential.
Overall reading of the year’s season across Pessac-Léognan. An estate can depart from it sharply, in frost or hail years, where two neighbours did not make the same vintage. What this particular wine actually gave is on its technical sheet and in the scores above.
Tasting
The style of the red wine is very classic, with a lovely expression of the Günzian Graves terroir that gives it wholly unique smoky notes. It seeks both elegance and structure, freshness and complexity, balance and richness.
Blend of the 2010 vintage
- 64 % Cabernet-sauvignon
- 30 % Merlot
- 5 % Cabernet franc
- 1 % Petit verdot
Shares for this vintage, as recorded on the 2010 technical sheet. The vineyard itself is planted with 30 % merlot, 60 % cabernet sauvignon, 9 % cabernet franc, 1 % petit verdot — a vintage blend departs from the area under vine as the year dictates.
Figures from the 2010 sheet
- 13 % vol.Alcohol
- 25 hl/haYield
- 38 yrsVine age
- 120,000 bottlesProduction
Winemaking
During tank filling, the grapes are chilled, encouraging a pre-fermentation maceration in an aqueous phase favourable to the exchange of colour and aroma. Fermentations then begin naturally with the indigenous yeasts of the cellar.
Ageing
18 months in barrel (65% new barrels made in our own in-house cooperage), ageing on lees, a single racking, then ageing adjusted for each wine.
Terroir
The terroir has such a strong personality that it gave the region its name: "Les Graves". These graves are an accumulation of alluvial, sandy and stony deposits laid down on a Tertiary limestone subsoil by the turbulent rivers and glaciers of the early Quaternary era, subsequently reshaped into gravel rises by erosion. At Smith Haut Lafitte, the soil is made up of one of the rare Günzian gravel rises, thick and ochre in colour, a sign of its richness in iron oxide. This soil is of high quality for viticulture because it is at once free-draining, very poor and warm at the surface, while maintaining a degree of coolness and moisture at depth (clay or limestone).
An offer on Château Smith Haut-Lafitte 2010
Availability, allocations and terms: the Compagnie Médocaine will reply promptly. The estate and vintage are already filled in in the message.
Texts and documents 2010
The texts below copy in one click for your product sheets, catalogues and social channels. The printable sheet condenses the whole page onto a single A4 page.
Visuals
This wine’s visuals are grouped in the media library. High-definition packshots, labels, back labels and lifestyle photos are reserved for clients and partners, on the Compagnie Médocaine’s VinCod media library.
Sheet checked on September 21, 2026. Technical data: the estate’s VinCod sheets. Critic scores: sources cited above, with their date. Vintage benchmarks and character: Compagnie Médocaine’s own editorial read. Soils and relief, where shown: the Compagnie Médocaine’s parcel survey and the Mapbox/IGN terrain model.