Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve: A grand Montrose, the biggest, most structured since 1970, but with more confident flavors, pure, strict, and better defined, also bringing to mind the sumptuous 2003, though a little less flamboyant. The finish is incomparable, not always easy to comprehend due to tight tannins and those metallic notes, similar to Latour, on the finish. Long cellaring will do it justice. 19

Michael Schuster: Closed to smell, but a fine, ripe blackberry-and-blackcurrant background; immediately full and warmly mouth-filling, harmonious, with a very firm but very fine-grained tannin; a nice freshness, too; long and powerful to taste, with a clear, freshly ripe fruit core, very long across the palate: density, matter, and great persistence. Finish also a touch hot and bitter, if you are sensitive to that. Gravel-backed elegance, along with 2009 power and force, though without heaviness. A deeper, ampler, sweeter, more velvety, and more powerful impression than its still-splendid 2008, which is an easier, fresher, more precise wine. 2022–40+. 17.5/18+