Château Haut-Bailly

Château Haut-Bailly is a reference point among Bordeaux wines. This Grand Cru Classé de Graves is located to the east of the town of Léognan, very near to Château Carbonnieux.

The vineyard came into being in 1630, thanks to a Parisian banker, Firmin Le Bailly, but it was Alcide Bellot des Minières who brought about its prestige in 1872. Its second renaissance dates back to 1955, when it was bought by a Belgian businessman and experienced 15 vintages of extraordinary wines. The 1970s witnessed some inconsistency regarding the quality of the Haut-Bailly wines, which began improving in the 80s and definitely got back on course in 1998, when the Wilmers family from the United States acquired the estate and introduced a change of style that required a period of adjustment.

In the early years they alternated between wines of unctuous smoothness and vintages with very firm tannins. Nowadays, the house has returned to top form, and the 2009 and 2010 have been recognised as two of the Château's best vintages, as they were back in the heydays of 1995 or 1990, and 2005 was even compared with the legendary 1928. Château Haut-Bailly is now acknowledged as a star, centrally placed on the Bordeaux wine scene, thanks to its elegant interpretation of the dark fruit and its silky tannins. This wine is harmonious and fantastically well-balanced, and has matured conserving the historic elegance but adding greater intensity. Robert Parker admitted to having made a mistake in his first evaluations of the Château Haut-Bailly wines, by judging their delicacy as a sign of weakness, and his appraisals have been improving to the point of awarding it the highly coveted 100 points.