($224) Bright red. Intensely floral, room-filling bouquet of strawberry, raspberry and smoky minerals. Deep and sweet but incredibly focused and pure, with luscious red berry preserve flavors, silky tannins and terrific mineral lift. Seems to gain depth on the finish, with the sweet red fruit qualities echoing. This is all about the fruit today.

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Some very rich, black fruit elements here. Quite aromatic and then very rich and velvety on the palate. It’s the finish that keeps it dry rather than sweet. Sandy tannins. Zesty. Lots of excitement there. This spreads fully across the palate. A very complete wine indeed. Pretty neat tannins and obvious oak influence here. Fifty year old vines on stony, clay, mid level vineyards.

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There are 481 cases of the black/purple 2005 Ermitage Le Meal. As always, classic blackberry, asphalt, charcoal, and beef blood notes jump from the glass of this intense wine. Full-bodied, with staggering concentration and a personality not terribly dissimilar from a first-growth Pauillac, but showing no evidence of oak whatsoever (and that is in spite of being aged in 100% new oak casks), this wine needs 10-12 years of bottle age, and should keep for 50-100 years.

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A big, broad-shouldered version, with loam, tobacco, currant paste and hoisin sauce notes out in front of the formidable tannin structure. Dark, loamy and muscular through the finish, with a haymaker of black fruit and tarry grip.

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