Andrew Jefford | Dark, saturated black-red with both black and purple at the rim. Soft, enticing, intricate, and multi-layered aromas and blackcurrant and damson fruits with ample creamy upholstery, dried orange peel, and petitgrain spice. Charm, freshness, seduction: this Palmer has it all. Greater wealth of aromatic resource than Rauzan-Segla, too, if you put them side by side. Yet another hugely impressive aromatic performance. On the palate, the wine has breadth and depth, as much as you will find in Margaux this year (on the basis of our Château-Margaux-less cohort). There are beautifully judged, springheeled yet soft-textured tannins; there is as much freshness as any, but entirely without the lean, cool edge with some of the commune’s wines have. In addition to the fruit-acid freshness which the vintage gives, this wine has the planty freshness that seems to be a legacy of the progress toward biodynamic purity and non-interventionist restraint at this property in recent years. In the end, it isn’t quite a great Palmer, as I just don’t think this vintage permits that in Margaux (unless you have ultra-classical tastes which distrust any hint of flamboyance). But it is every bit as true to the vintage and to the soil ensemble as you would imagine, and it is a vintage reference, too, for anyone who wants to understand it in its entirety rather than waltz around cherry-picking and point-scoring. | 94

Michael Schuster | A subtle, finely gravelly, blackcurrant sweet nose—very persistent; rich, medium-weight wine, fresh, fine-textured, harmonious; a cassis-sweet core flavor, long and graceful to taste, complex, tenacious, restrained, subtly fleshy, and full of fine Cabernet cassis perfume, with lovely fragrant length. A beautiful, complete, succulently sweet, and refined Margaux. 2026–46+. | 95