
Château Haut-Bailly 2012
Ageing potential20+ years

Ageing potential20+ years
Vintage benchmark: 85/100 (appellation benchmark, not a score for this wine)
Vintage character: A late cycle closing with rain gave an uneven vintage: the cabernets hold up, the merlots remain taut.
Overall reading of the year’s season across Pessac-Léognan. An estate can depart from it sharply, in frost or hail years, where two neighbours did not make the same vintage. What this particular wine actually gave is on its technical sheet and in the scores above.
Shares for this vintage, as recorded on the 2012 technical sheet. The vineyard itself is planted with 60 % cabernet sauvignon, 34 % merlot, 3 % cabernet franc, 3 % petit verdot — a vintage blend departs from the area under vine as the year dictates.
Alcoholic fermentation lasts 8 to 10 days but vatting continues for 3 weeks, a period during which balance is sought above all. Vinification is carried out away from excessive temperatures and no excessive reheating disrupts the end of fermentation.
16 months in barrels (50 to 65% new).
A Grand Cru Classé at the gates of Bordeaux, Château Haut-Bailly looks out majestically over a 30-hectare vineyard in a single block, established on one of the highest gravel rises of the left bank. It benefits from an excellent gradient of the slopes, effective drainage and well-distributed ditches that carry the water away in wet years. Of the three components of terroir, the soil is the most subtle: here it combines a soil of sands mixed with gravels that slipped down in the Quaternary era with a subsoil of falun, or petrified fossil stone, which is one of its major characteristics.
Availability, allocations and terms: the Compagnie Médocaine will reply promptly. The estate and vintage are already filled in in the message.
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For this vintage, the media library contains: packshots, labels. High-definition packshots, labels, back labels and lifestyle photos are reserved for clients and partners, on the Compagnie Médocaine’s VinCod media library.
Sheet checked on September 21, 2026. Technical data: the estate’s VinCod sheets. Critic scores: sources cited above, with their date. Vintage benchmarks and character: Compagnie Médocaine’s own editorial read. Soils and relief, where shown: the Compagnie Médocaine’s parcel survey and the Mapbox/IGN terrain model.