Andrew Jefford | Dark, saturated, opaque black-red with lingering purple hues toward the glass-staining rim. The aromas are a great mill of blackcurrant scents which, when you peep beneath the bonnet, also show a creamier side; there is some fresh tea-leaf and flower, too. Very complete for the vintage, with all of the athleticism and purity of St-Julien fruit at its best, but with an inner aromatic wealth, too. It obviously needs much longer. Plungingly fruity, clean, pure, and long on the palate, withatorrent of blackcurrant which contrives to be both sweet and limitlessly fresh at the same time. The tannins are almost invisible at present, but a little more generous than you might think. In terms of its flavors, the wine is such an essence of blackcurrant just now that it’s almost hard to imagine what else might lurk inside the pod but there is much evolution to come and we may see a little more of the wine’s spice and stone in due course. Commanding and authoritative, the very essence of the commune— and a fruited Colossus. | 97

Michael Schuster | A fine, persistent blackcurrant and gravel nose; medium- to full-bodied wine, with a lively defining acidity and a fine grained but very firm tannin; sweet and “gravelly” to taste, long, even, elegant, and mouthcoating, and very prolonged in aftertaste; a grand, complete, complex expression of the vineyard; a very fine, firm, long-term wine, a most consummate Las Cases. All the best 2016 features here, ripeness, richness, fresh definition, and fine tannin textures. 2035–55+. | 95