Stephen Brook: Opaque red. Spicy, oaky nose, black fruits, licorice, and fruitcake. Quite rich and succulent, concentrated, spicy, vigorous, quite high alcohol, but at least there is some energy here. Quite a forceful wine with plenty of personality, and quite impressive for a wine about to lose its GCC status! There’s no finesse here and its tannins are rugged, but it has some structure and vigor. 16

Stephen Browett: Very deep color. Powerful, heady and alcoholic on the nose. Prune-like concentration here and clearly big efforts have been made to beef this up! Impressive if not exactly a typical St-Emilion. Chunky. Several tasters particularly disliked it for the same reason that it would no doubt impress certain other critics. 14

Michael Schuster: Very dark red; very ripe fruit and abundant new wood to smell on the nose; plenty of rich, ripe, fleshy fruit here, within a very dry wood and extract tannin; slightly “hot” and “spirity”, and faintly “raisiny” in flavor, moderately complex, but above all a good quality ripe fruit marred by being put into too much new wood, so that the astringent texture distracts from the fruit quality. Finishes tough, hot, pinched. 14