1990 Haut Bailly Pessac Leognan

1990 Haut Bailly Pessac Leognan

This label has been a void for me when it comes to older vintages, as I believed production must have been miniscule a few decades ago. Thus, I was really eager to pop open this bottle. Bouquet was stunning, a blend of strong floral and sweet vanilla overwhelmed the stemware, almost oozing out. Palette wasn’t as exciting as most Bordeaux 1990 wines, not inferior, just not quite on par with the top producers, and lacking an X factor. Mainly sweet vanilla and well tailored taste, with decent finesse and balanced acidity and fruits. I tasted Haut Bailly 1989 next to a Cos d’Estournel 1989 many years ago, and the Haut Bailly paled. This 1990 was definitely not on par with Cos d’Estournel 1990 as well. I have to jump to conclusion that older Haut Bailly quality wasn’t as good as the modern production (post 2004). I was blown away by the quality of Haut Bailly when I had a dinner with 5 vintages of young Haut Bailly (2005, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011), I even described it as baby Lafite in style.