Michel Bettane: Big brownish color, lots of toasty oak (toastiness from barrel and intense reductive undertones); very ripe fruit, very long but with the help of the barrel! Refined tannin. Excessive perhaps but persuasive. 15.5

Thierry Desseauve: Dark and luminous color; superb nose, fresh and exuberant with toast, red fruit, cedar, sweet spices; soft, fine, and ripe tannins, elegant body; Arabica coffee and cedar aromas in mouth; length, freshness, balance. A true work of art! 17

Michael Schuster: Mature, brick-rimmed dark red; soft, sweetly ripe fruit marked by high-quality oak cedar; well-balanced, medium-full, lightly tannic, vital wine, with the oak at the moment quite present both as a dry texture and a vanillin aroma, but a refined and juicily ripe flavor within the dryness and good length. Let’s hope it absorbs the oak presence over time. Accessible now; better in a couple of years. 2012–18. 15.5