Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve: Imposing structure, enchanting length. The texture is voluptuous and welcoming: a little less developed than a few of the other superstars but immensely promising. The 2009 was the slightest bit more appealing at the same stage. The Petit Mouton is anything but small. 19

John Gilman: The 2010 Mouton has not managed to carry its 14% alcoholic ripeness without sacrificing precision on both nose and palate. The wine offers up a ripe and fairly complex bouquet of black cherries, black raspberries, coffee bean, cigar smoke, soil, and lead pencil. On the palate, the wine is deep, full-bodied, and quite broad-shouldered, with a rock-solid core of ripe fruit, very firm but well-integrated tannins, and a long, slightly blurry finish. The harmony of acids, ripe fruit, and firm tannins here is much better than in any of the other wines in the Mouton stable this year, but 2010 is a vintage where the strident ripeness has been very hard to harness and provide a wine with the customary focus and delineation that is almost taken for granted at Mouton Rothschild. This is a good wine but decidedly not a great vintage for Mouton. It may improve over the course of its élevage and eventually place at the higher end of this scoring range, but it is hardly a legend in the making. 2020–75+. 16/17.5

Michael Schuster: Ripe blackcurrant and clear mineral to smell, real depth and density; rich, elegant, fairly concentrated wine, with a fresh acidity and very fine, dry tannin, noticeably Cabernet in flavor and style; fresh, cassis-cored, fine, gravel-scented flavor; a sweet, generous fruit of great complexity and minerality but presented with remarkable delicacy; a subtle richness and flesh, very long and complex to taste, with a marked Pauillac spice. Great freshness, definition, and tremendous, spicy, fruit-fragrant length. A most beautiful Mouton—a sort of super 1996 in style. 2025–50+. 19/19.5