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: Intense, intriguing nose with dark and dark red fruit, strong fruit core, some candied and burnt sugar notes with an overall muscular impression. On the palate this shows a lot of tension with not yet fully round tannins. The wine is mainly driven by minerality, some stems, green bell pepper, ashes and smoke. Some first tertiarty tobacco notes are emerging. High acidity but well integrated. Overall good but missing a touch of roundness. This has certainly the substance to develop into a very good wine. While good today, this could become a 95+ pts wine in another 5 to 10 years with a more melted structure and more tertiary complexity. The Mission in the next glass reached the same 93pts level today as it showed more mature and round but it doesn’t have the same life expectancy and will not reach the same heights.

Decanting: Two+ hours should certainly help.

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