Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve: Pavie undeniably crowns a great vintage (for Gérard Perse and his teams) with its astounding dimension. With very rich, wonderfully refined texture, restrained power, and remarkably silky tannins, it’s one of the great wines of the vintage. At this stage, its supreme balance is even more remarkable than that of the 2009. 19

John Gilman: I tasted Pavie at both the premiers grands crus classés tasting and at the estate (verifying that this really is the wine in this vintage). Given that the vineyards at Pavie are planted to 70 percent Merlot, the wine was harvested very late (October 12–19). In any event, the 2010 Pavie is absurdly overripe, unpleasant to taste, and patently out of balance. The liqueur-like nose offers up a high-octane cocktail of kirsch, framboise, smoke, mocha, and a boatload of new oak. On the palate, the wine is deep, huge, very overripe, and pruney, with zero focus or delineation, a blur of alcohol, and the most profoundly astringent, searing, and brutally tannic finish I have ever tasted. I wish I could say that the wine is at least short on the back end, but it is stubbornly sadistic. The one good aspect about the brutal level of tannin is that it distracts the taster from the nasty elements of surmaturité on both nose and palate. 0–3?

Michael Schuster: Raisiny ripe to smell, with hints of a fine eau-de-vie; concentrated, vigorous, tannic wine; plenty of delicate fruit at its heart, long sweet, complex, racy, and refined; plenty of mouth-coating aroma, with the underlying minerality also there but rather overwhelmed by the level of ripeness; very well-sustained flavor, with a fine fragrance and persistence on the finish. Neither heavy nor fierce, and with an attractive freshness to it, but I just wish the texture were more amenable, friendly, malleable, refined. Otherwise, great class, delicacy, finesse, and length. Probably needs 15 years. 2025–40+. 17.5/18.5