Andrew Jefford | Dark black-red, just off opaque at the core. Soft-scented for St-Emilion, light and sweet-fruited, with graceful plum, cherry, and blackberry fruits; fragrant, nuanced. There are notes of red flowers, moist tobacco leaf and baking chocolate: sensually appealing and harmonious. Soft and ripe (for this vintage) on the palate, too. More chocolate and tobacco in with the plush plums, cherry, and blackberry. Soft tannins—and ample structural acid support. Yet the acid isn’t driving and whipping the fruit along, as so often elsewhere; instead, there is both tension and equilibrium between the two. You won’t, of course, find the mid-palate wealth of a warm, favored vintage, and I wouldn’t leave it in the cellar for longer than a decade, but I doubt these high vineyards could have turned out a better wine in 2017 than this. | 91

Michael Schuster | Dense, black-fruit ripe and perfumed nose; rich, concentrated, moderately tannic wine, gently fresh in acidity, a firm constitution for Bélair-Monange. Plenty of sweetly ripe fruit here, juicy, succulent, subtle, mouth-coating, all within a firmish frame; but this is a refined, complete, toothsomely defined wine with lovely fragrant length. Such succulence you could relish it already, but for most, its texture begs for more time to mellow. 2030–45+. | 93