Andrew Jefford | Saturated, deep, dense black-red in color. Great wealth of warm, sweet, almost roasty-ripe blackcurrants on the aromas, backed by fine-milled perfume spices, exotic Havana leaf, burned raisin, and dark chocolate. Perhaps I’ve overdone the allusions, because what you smell is very seamless and harmonious, appetizing, warm, and alluring: a riper appeal than many of its peers, but commanding and authoritative nonetheless. You’ll find that authority on the palate, too, and an inner warmth that has nothing to do with alcohol and everything to do with the roar of ripe fruits on great gravel soils. There is very fine complexity of flavor here—you can return to the wine for scrutiny half-a-dozen times and not exhaust its resource. This unquestionably needs a decade to come into its own and is one of the vintage’s finest wines. | 95

Michael Schuster | Dense but closed to smell; full-bodied, concentrated wine, fresh in acidity, finely but very firmly tannic; a deep and distinctively sweetly ripe flavor, long and juicy and firmly textured; complex, aromatic, mouthcoating wine, with both musculature and marked finesse at once; a most complete top Bordeaux of considerable scope and very long-term promise. 2040–60+. | 95