Community Tasting Note

Cailles wrote:

Wednesday, November 23, 2022 - Ten Vintages Haut Bailly vs Mission HB: Preamble: All wines tasted blind in 10 vintage flights (1994-2015). To every flight one random third wine from Pessac Leognan added (2x Haut Brion, 2x Smith, 2x Pape Clement, 1x Branon, 1x Luchy Halde, 1x Carmes, 1x Chevalier). All wines opened a few hours before consumption but no decanting.

Some findings:
1) Haut Bailly outperformed Mission (5 vs 4 wins, 92.5 vs 90.5 average). 2) Haut Bailly is a rather structured wine which seems to shine bright in ripe and warm vintages, without any form of excess ripeness or extraction. 3) When done right (05/15), Mission eclipses Haut Bailly with its depth and delineation , but several vintages showed a bit too ripe but especially with the alcohol not well masked (09/10). 4) Pessac wines usually need quite some air to open up. In this setting (no decanting), most wines needed a lot of swirling to fully open up and will need more cellar time. 5) The best wines today were Haut Bailly 09 (96pts) & 10 (95pts) and Mission 05 & 15 (95pts).

TN: Not as bad as the 2009 (rated 84pts) but the well-structured, fine wine with quite fresh fruit is overshadowed by lots of unintegrated oak and a with alcohol showing. It might be a phase or the bottle isn’t good enough but this bottle was a clear miss.

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