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: Expressive and well-defined, classically shaped bouquet. Lots of fine blue fruit, red fruits and then lots of green bell pepper and smoky notes, curshed rocks. On the palate that herbal, smoky and bell pepper notes lends a lot of freshness and lifts the wine with its blue and dark fruit core even more. Very fine but not as luxurious tannins as in the Mission 2015 in the next glass. Overall, this is a very fine, elegant, classic Bordeaux which is very fresh and blue-fruit driven which is not easy to achieve in the hot year. It probably misses a bit of the immediate charm of other 2015 (and the Mission 2015) but is nevertheless a very good wine.

Decanting: Good from the go, a short decant should be sufficient.

Post a Comment / View Cailles's profile
Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No / Report Issue (4,848 views)