John Gilman 93 pts! Tasted 10-22  It had been three years since I last drank a bottle of the 1979 Château Haut-Bailly and the wine has continued to blossom beautifully over that time and is drinking even better today than it was back in 2019. As readers may recall, proprietor Jean Sanders had just taken over the helm of this family estate from his father in 1979, and as this was his first vintage in control of Haut-Bailly, he wanted to make it special and declassified fully one-third of the production here into his second wine. The result is a stellar Haut-Bailly, offering up a beautiful nose of cherries, blood orange, Cuban cigar wrapper, a beautiful base of minerality, nutskin, a touch of oak and plenty of upper register smokiness. On the palate the wine is pure, full-bodied and tangy, with excellent mid-palate depth, fine soil inflection, excellent complexity and a long, poised and extremely well-balanced finish that still shows a touch of backend tannin. Great juice. (Drink between 2022 - 2050)