Stephen Brook | There’s a light toastiness on the nose, which might be oak-derived, but there’s also sturdy sour-cherry fruit. Suave and rounded, this shows ample up-front fruit but also a good tannic backbone and concentration. There’s zest and energy in spades, if no great subtlety. It’s quite assertive, which contributes to the persistence of flavor. It may become more nuanced with time. Long. | 92

Andrew Jefford | Deep, clear black-red: plenty of depth of color here. This aromatic profile, while forceful, lacks a little subtlety, and there are also some rubbery reductive traces—I will look again after five minutes. Later: lessened but not cleared, so not wholly successful in aromatic terms for me. Warm, woodland fruits beneath the reduction. Flavory and long, with attractive ripeness and fruit flavor: broad, smooth plums. The faintly reductive note is evident on the palate—I think this wine needs lots of air. But the raw materials are good, the ripeness is delicious, the fruit very moreish, and for all the reservations, this is a bottle that I would love to sit down to dinner with. | 87

Michael Palij | Concentrated nose, with red and black cherry, plum, tobacco, strawberry, and vanilla. The palate is ripe and rounded, with the fruit easily handling the oak, but the alcohol is very high in this wine, leading to a disjointed finish where the needling effect on the back of the palate detracts from the experience. Big, fat, and concentrated, this is marginally too steroidal to be attractive. | 90