AJ | Dark black-red, just off opaque at the core, and fully scarlet at the meniscus. Typical Roc de Cambes flamboyance! Amazing stuff: garrigue and lavender, over a big broad waft of hot-stone ripeness. Totally sui generis in vintage terms. Highly characterful to the point of being divisive; not eveyone will like it. But, folks, forget all your rinky-dinky little punnets of blackcurrants scattered with leaves here: we're in a totally different universe. On the palate, of course, ditto. It's big, it's broad, it's expansive; it's mellow; it has lovely soft ample tannins and ripe fruit characters; it must have been picked shortly before Christmas. (I'm teasing.) I really enjoy this ... but it won't please classicists, and nor will it be a long-lived Roc de Cambes for Roc de Cambes collectors -- it just doesn't have the inner energy and gathered force of less stressful vintages. But you won't taste many 21s like this, and those who come across this wine without a torrent of intellectual expectations clustering around the notion of "freshness" will, I think, have a great time. Drink Dates: 2027 - 2032. 89
SF | Distinct ruby amber colour, but with no fade at the rim. A powerfully persuasive nose; game, plum gunpowder and crushed chalk. There is no reason to believe that M Mitjavile would abandon his late harvest philosophy in an apparently difficult year. Ans so it has come to pass; resinous ripe plum fruit, dates, quince and fig, a delightful cornucopia of late season indulgence. The palate is a little more restrained, diminuendo practiced in the nam eof harmonious integration and the canards of brett and over-extraction visited. Generally however, this is successful, poised, idiosyncratic and, surely, supremely food friendly. Sanglier a la paysan, anyone? Drink Dates: 2027 - 2039. 92