2000 Château Haut-Bailly

The 2000 Château Haut-Bailly is a clear step up over the 1998 and 1999, offering medium to full-bodied richness as well as wonderful purity in its darker currants, tobacco, chocolate, and graphite-like aromas and flavors. It’s concentrated and powerful, yet most of the baby fat has fallen away, and this is a classic Haut-Bailly (despite being a more Merlot-shifted blend) that has ripe, polished tannins, a seamless mouthfeel, and a great finish.

The 2000 Haut-Bailly has a well defined bouquet with red berry fruit, earthy tones, touches of melted tar and leather. This seems fully mature but still offers plenty of vigour. The palate has surprising acidity and quite sharp on the entry. Fresh but unapologetically, it is a little rustic with a ferrous, slightly dry finish. This is a fine, mature Haut-Bailly that just seems a touch more developed than I anticipated. Tasted at the Haut-Bailly vertical at the château.

I have had this wine a few times this year. It's brillant, open and ready to share over Christmas. As ever with Haut-Bailly - particularly during these years - don't expect it to be the biggest wine in the room, but it is concentrated and nuanced, still with a long life ahead of it. With a few hours in a carafe, you see the full extent of the finessed tannins and beautifully savoury cassis and blueberry fruits, laced with tar, tobacco and grilled cedar spice. Harvest from September 13 to October 11. Bob Wilmers had bought the estate in 1998, and this was the first vintage with Véronique Sanders as president (her grandfather owned the property before the Wilmers family), Denis Dubourdieu consultant.