Andrew Jefford | Deep black-red out to scarlet at the rim. Insinuating grace, cream, warmth, and fine, aerial fruits come together in this typically understated but magnetically charming aroma. Once again, as so often for the very best St-Emilions this year, you start thinking about Burgundy when you smell this: raspberry is a fruit analogy shared by the two regions, and the blossom-like grace with this is expressed here gives the drinker pause. Of course there’s also an inner aromatic force and a pippy warmth, and the support of plums behind, which are more St-Emilionnais—and, once the wine is in the mouth, a breadth and a velvet. The liveliness of the vintage here is not expressed (as generally elsewhere) by acidity, but by a noble vegetal freshness. Quietly glorious wine whose balance and inner resource suggest a long life ahead. We might also note how well the 2016 vintage style lends itself to Cheval Blanc’s own style of daring limpidity and restraint. Gorgeous now and likely to become more so. | 96

Michael Schuster | Immediately a wonderful nose, subtle, complex, fragrant, floral, ripe-fruited, gently oak-cedary, an immediate impression of class and complexity, and very persistent to smell; rich, concentrated, very fresh, finely and firmly tannic; a deep, sweet, mouthcoating presence, with great length of flavor and very prolonged to finish. Gentle power plus finesse, full of absorbing detail. An imposing, yet still refined, long-term Cheval. 2034–50+. | 96