(90% merlot with 10% cabernet franc) Deep ruby-purple; much darker than La Petite Eglise. Enticing floral nose offers refined, delicate aromas of cassis, spicy dried herbs, coffee and violet. Dense and round but juicy in the mouth, with bright black fruit and underbrush flavors nicely lifted by lively acidity. This has a captivating seamless quality and lingers impressively on the long, rising, firmly tannic but smooth finish. Less accessible than the 2009 was at the same stage of development, this will greatly improve with bottle age and should be long-lived. One of the wines of the vintage, but don't even think of opening a bottle before 2020.

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'In 2009 it was easier to present primeur samples.’ Very dark and glowing crimson. Savoury and dense and lively. Lip smacking. Lots of sweetness and nerve. Well done! A very firm thread and great integrity. Lovely texture. Much more sweetness than I would expect for a 2010. Racy and charming but with real density. 'The most complicated thing was to decide how many pumpovers to do each day. We reduced the number and the length of the macerations. Alcoholic fermentation was at less than 28°C. Because we were so afraid to extract tannins we couldn’t age in barrels.’

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This wine will likely be a major superstar with about 10-15 years of cellaring. It was one of the more closed and difficult wines to penetrate and one of probably only a dozen or so 2010s that I only had one chance to taste from bottle, but it is loaded with fabulous raw materials. The 2010 is a profound effort, but it needs to be forgotten for at least a decade. This opaque purple wine offers up notes of caramelized black currant and black cherry candies intermixed with some very high class, subtle vanillin and toast. Hints of licorice, mocha and perhaps even a touch of chocolate are also present in this full-bodied, super-duper, concentrated, classic wine, which has everything in perfect proportions. But in the finish, its whoppingly big tannins kick in and basically announce that drinking this wine now would be infanticide. Look for this wine to last for at least 50+ years.

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