A more elegant and slightly more complex nose of red berry and blue fruit aromas nuanced with an array of subtle hints of game, spice, earth and underbrush leads to rich, intense and even more detailed flavors that culminate in a linear and driving finish that offers impressive punch and energy. Like the Mazis, there is a sleek muscularity here and a real sense of underlying tension on the explosive finish.

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($191) Good medium red. Aromas of kirsch and briary brown spices, with a medicinal aspect. Bigger, richer and deeper than the Mazy but more brooding and medicinal today. For its size and concentration, this shows very suave tannins for the year. But has the acid spine for a slow evolution in the bottle. I'd forget about this one for seven or eight years.

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Extremely rich and seductive on both the eye and nose. Wonderfully satisfying and balanced in terms of perfume already. Great freshness and clarity of fruit. Really quite racy and punchy. So pure! The opposite of galumphing – like a thoroughbred racehorse. Fresh, sappy fruit. Terribly impressive.

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Rousseau's 2005 Clos de la Roche offers a nose of ripe cherries, cedar and brown spices, a rich and expansive palate, and a sweet, pure, juicy finish of cherry, boysenberry, toasty, crusty pastry, hints of caramel, a whiff of wood smoke and a lick of salt. For purity of fruit and intensity allied to formidable extract and superb, lattice-like structure, it's hard to beat this wine as a candidate for at least a couple of decades in the cellar, one to check up on in eight or ten years.

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