Simon Field | Magisterial color; walnut, then terra-cotta and a very slow “fade.” Generous orange blossom, nutmeg, and even verbena, on the nose, ripe strawberry and an impressive lift. A fruit-basket of flavor, primary, secondary, tertiary, all three if you like; a moving target, in both senses of both words; old libraries for sure, but quite modern in outlook; before automatic lagares for sure, and therefore one has to conclude that the quality and concentration of the fruit is underwritten by the year itself. One that I have long appreciated. | 94

Andrew Jefford | Deep, dark oxblood-red; as with the other dark-hued wines in this 1970 cohort, the glints are not russet for some reason but more walnut or ebony, at least at this stage. Warm, sweet, toffeed, quite flamboyant; expansive, with ample coffee-fig sweetness. Wild mushroom, too; though there is some debate among the tasters as to whether this wine’s toffeed style reveals oxidation, so we are going to try a second bottle. The second bottle is substantially the same for me, with that same rather rough-and-ready style and some malt-extract fruits. It’s characterful, for sure, but not a huge success aromatically speaking. On the palate, it is generously sweet as most 1970s are, but lacks subtlety, poise, and refinement; here, too, the fruits seem rather malt- extract-like and coarse-grained. It does, though, have much more depth than the lightest of its peers, so I feel a little guilty in clobbering it with this rather modest score. | 86

Richard Mayson | Good mid-deep center and thin, tawny rim; another wine that seems rather flat and baked on the nose with a vestige of ripe fruit underlying; second bottle similarly baked and Bovrily. (I don’t much like Bovril unless I am drinking it at a rugby match.) Somewhat better on the palate, structured but still lacking primacy, with a rather dry leathery character mid-palate and onto the finish. | 85