Stephen Browett: Medium-deep color, showing a little fade. Good, smoky nose. Medium weight on the palate and already quite open. It would not be a crime to drink this tonight. Plenty of plummy fruit on the mid palate, good weight and texture. Smooth and well polished but neither the density nor the complexity of the wines that follow. 16.5

Andrew Jefford: Mid red-black. Elegant, sweet, soft, silky, chiffon. Not complex or showy. Deep, full, better wealth and width than I’d expected; close-packed tannins; lashings of dark power. Lots of coal peat flesh on the spade; taste of tannin. The only problem is the width of expression. Drinking in 10+ years.

Michael Schuster: Dark red, narrow, bricking rim; soft, sweetly ripe fruit to smell—but not particularly aromatic; elegantly balanced middleweight with a fine, firm, still chewy tannin; ripe, warm, delicate, scented; very freshly sweet in flavor, subtly mouthcoating; fine scent on the finish. Very Haut-Brion, but lacking the richness of flesh, and the aromatic scope of a really fine year. 17.5