John Gilman: Château Rauzan-Gassies is one of the most exciting upstarts in the commune of Margaux these days, and the estate has turned in a splendid performance in the challenging vintage of 2010. The bouquet is deep, complex, and very fine, offering up a melange of dark berries, sweet cassis, Cuban cigars, gravel, espresso, and a deft base of new wood. On the palate, the wine is deep, full-bodied, complex, and quite suave, with a fine core of fruit, firm well-integrated tannins, and excellent length and grip on the beautifully focused finish. I suspect that some proportion of this wine’s malo is also done in new barrels here, as the wine has a touch of roundness emblematic of this approach on the attack. I would love to see the estate do away with the practice in the future, since I expect that even more precision in the expression of terroir could be found with a totally traditional approach in the cellar. But that said, this is really one of the most successful wines in the commune in 2010. 2020–50+. 17.5