Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve: Tremendous substance; the wine’s texture is both monumental and seductive, and the tannins are magically woven into this same texture; amazing length, too. A giant that is destined to become a legend. 19.5/20

John Gilman: The 2010 La Mission Haut-Brion is the most mammoth of all the wines in the Dillon stable, tipping the scales at an unprecedented 15.1% ABV. The nose is very deep, very ripe, and, amazingly, also quite compelling as it offers up scents of black cherries, sweet cassis, bitter chocolate, soil tones, cigar smoke, gravel, and a generous, very well-integrated base of new oak. I much prefer the wood integration on the 2010 La Mission to the 2009 at the same stage a year ago. On the palate, the wine is deep, full-bodied, powerful, and sharply acidic, with a rock-solid core of pure fruit, very hard tannins, excellent focus, and great length and grip on the tensile finish. The acids today are quite coarse, and one hopes that they will eventually be tamed. They tend to sharpen the expression of the fruit, but they are not currently integrated into the body of the wine and cause a fair bit of discordance on the finish. The 2010 La Mission, despite its higher alcohol content than the 2010 Haut-Brion, shows fewer signs of overripeness on the back end than its first-growth stablemate. It, too, is a very forcefully styled and bruising young wine, and I have a hard time imagining its ultimate shape. Perhaps it will turn out as well as the 1975 La Mission, but it may also always be a wine that never fully pulls its currently disparate elements into a cohesive and compelling whole. 2025–75? 13.5/17.5

Michael Schuster: Full-bodied, vivid, fairly potent wine, with a fine, firm, long-term tannin; very ripe and powerful flavor, long across the palate. While the wine doesn’t lack freshness, it does lack the characteristic Graves, “gravelly” aromatic character. The fresh to vital acidity prevents it from being heavy, but you cannot escape the warmth and weight of 15% alcohol. Long and sweet-scored aftertaste, dominated by fruit rather than aroma. This may change with bottle age, when the terroir often comes to the fore in hotter vintages—and you can indeed taste the minerality in the Chapelle de La Mission—but I wouldn’t bet on it! Very atypical. 2022–40+. 17/18