Simon Field | Dark, sooty color, a potent aroma of unformed quality, chronicle of a triumph foretold, or at least inferred at this age. Raw and uncooked, resinous and teasing. The palate is a little more forthcoming at this juncture, the sheer weight of ripe, generous fruit threatening to challenge all sense of proportion and perspective with its youthful, optimistic call to arms. | 94

Andrew Jefford | Dense, saturated black out to purple at the rim. Very refined and finely crafted aromatics here: blackcurrant, bramble, damson, and sloe fruits, with dried orange-peel freshness and a Cologne freshness and style to the wine. Focused and enticing. In the mouth, the wine is ample, sweet, full, complex, and deep, with very fine extracts, tannins, and inner force. I hoped for just a little more fruited precision after the aromatic profile; the sugars rather sweep all in their tide here. But this is very fine however you look at it, and it may be that as the extracts and the puppy- fat sugars ease back, the fruits come to reveal themselves more prominently—as the aromas suggest. | 97

Richard Mayson | Closed, with dark-chocolate intensity underlying on the nose and a great deal more to give. Some lovely bittersweet cherry-berry fruit initially, with firm tannins rising in the mouth to a long, lithe, linear finish with the freshness of the fruit reemerging. Lovely poise if not the biggest wine here. | 94