Chateau Haut-Bailly 2016

Professional Ratings

• 98 James Suckling
  Wonderful aromas of tobacco, sweet fruit and licorice follow through to a full body with ultra-fine tannins that caress every inch of your palate. Love the length and subtlety to this young wine. Gorgeous. Drink after 2024.
• 98 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
  The 2016 Haut-Bailly is medium to deep garnet-purple in color. The nose opens with beautiful floral notes of violets and lavender accented with earthy notions and sparks of crushed rocks over a core of kirsch, cassis and wild blueberries. Full-bodied, rich and seductive, it has layer upon layer of red, black and blue fruits intermingled with earth and mineral hints leading to a very long, perfumed finish.
• 98 Decanter
  Still extremely knitted down, pretty closed at the four year point as you would expect in a vintage that has such walls, floors, ceiling and buttressing. The tannins are very much present but even now they are confident without being intrusive, and the future potential is singing. There are traces of gunsmoke, suggesting even after four years in bottle we are still very much in the reductive phase, so don't drink this for at least another five years. But wow is it going to be good. Blend completed by 3% Cabernet Franc. Drinking Window 2026 - 2045
• 98 Jeb Dunnuck

  I obviously underrated the 2016 Château Haut-Bailly on release, and it easily tops out my scale. A hypothetical blend of the 2009 and 2010, it has the opulence and sexiness of a ripe, sunny vintage (à la 2009) paired with incredible purity, concentration, structure, and elegance (à la 2010). Incredible aromatics of cassis, liquid violets, cedar pencil, flowers, and minerals give way to a full-bodied, multi-dimensional, layered Haut-Bailly offering ultra-fine tannins, flawless overall balance, nothing out of place, and the class to drink well today yet evolve for 30-40 years.

• 97 Wine Enthusiast
  From an always-impressive estate, this vintage is superb, offering big tannins plus but also generous black fruits and powerful ripeness. Dense and with a good structure for aging, the wine will develop slowly and will not be ready before 2026.
  Cellar Selection
• 95 Wine Spectator
  This is energetic and grippy, with tar and melted licorice notes wrapped around a core of bramble, red currant paste and black cherry preserve flavors. The tarry edge reemerges on the finish, working with a singed apple wood element to give this solid drive through the finish. Best from 2023 through 2038.
• 93 Connoisseurs' Guide

  Château Haut-Bailly always seems to show a little more muscle and sheer fruity strength than the majority of its same-appellation mates, and, while it does once again in 2016, it shows a certain sense of reserve and leaves the indelible impression that it is far from revealing all that it has. It is solidly built stuff with the tannic grip of a claret that, in no uncertain terms, begs for age, and we would not be surprised if it has yet to fully open up even as it approaches its tenth birthday.