Alison Buchanan: Opaque mahogany, with an amber rim, clinging to the glass, this has a very savory element on the nose—almost Bovril-esque in intensity yet with obvious underlying fruit sweetness, raisins: Eccles cakes. The palate offers figs, prunes, and indeed sweet raisins, vibrantly spiced and refreshed by orange zest. This is a highly complex wine, multifaceted and perpetually changing in the glass, revealing myriad layers and infinite subtleties— extraordinary in its energy and freshness at this stage. | 93

Andrew Jefford: Saturated walnut black. This sample seems at first just a little bit reduced, lacking the perfumed refinement you’d hope to find here. Give it a good swirl, though, and the plants and spice and menthol and cedar begin to emerge. After five minutes, they are in full flow, and you have a luscious forest on your hands, full of sweet enchantments. Super-rich and weighty on the palate; we’re beginning to get toward the weight of Essencia here. It takes a few seconds to ignite out of the sugars—and then it’s off, striking all manner of black-burned savory perfumed unction out of the sheer weight of sugar. Imagine coal was made of sugar, and you pressed it, and out seeped the essences of the carboniferous forests into which it came into being—that’s the kind of thing you find here. Is it a wine? A food? An essence? Hard to say; all three, perhaps. Monumental, for sure. | 97

Margaret Rand: Toast and woody notes—the flavors of a very old wine. Tastes like a cellar full of old barrels smells—that addictive smell. Very fresh, lean, and lush; linear, great concentration; so powerful that you only want a small glass—but what a glass. | 94