($425) Glass-staining ruby. The nose offers a drop-dead sexy array of berry, floral and mineral scents, along with nuances of spicecake and black olive. Impressively deep and sweet but also energetic, displaying dense red and dark fruit liqueur flavors and sexy floral pastille and baking spice qualities. The mineral quality comes on strong with air and lends lift and urgency to the very long, spicy finish. This is slightly more elegant than the Comte des Fous but just as potent.

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The following three wines are as great as money can buy, and all three represent extraordinary achievements. I have tasted the 2007 Chateauneuf du Pape Deus-Ex Machina three times from bottle. On two of the three times I thought it was the single greatest red wine I have ever tasted. The third time it was merely perfect. Made from 60- to 100+-year-old vines (60% tank-aged Grenache and 40% Mourvedre aged in new and one-year-old oak barrels), from yields no larger than one half ton of fruit per acre, it boasts a saturated purple color as well as a surreal concoction of heavenly aromatic delights (creme de cassis, kirsch liqueur, licorice, spring flowers, spice box, and smoke). The wine hits the palate with an extraordinary seamless display of incredibly rich, pure fruit, and a full-bodied, multilayered texture that nearly defies belief. It is almost an insult to try to articulate what this wine tastes like. My tasting notes ended with the words "great, great, and great." This is a remarkable achievement even for such a famous vintage, and this 2007 is destined to be one of the legends of the new century. The finish lasts over 60 seconds, and the wine has the accessibility to be appreciated now, but it will not hit its peak for another 5-7 years, and will last at least 25+ years. Bravo to proprietors Pascal and Vincent Maurel as well as their consulting genius, Philippe Cambie, who seems to have a very strong emotional attachment to the Maurel family as well as to their vineyards.

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This offers the heady, opulent fig, crushed plum and boysenberry fruit of the vintage, but allies it to a racy graphite and incense-infused structure. Superlong, with black tea, warm fig reduction, chocolate and roasted apple wood notes that really stretch out the finish. Great underlying acidity holds it all together. Very impressive.

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