Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
100 points
The extraordinary seductiveness, complex aromatics, and purity it exhibits lead me to believe it has reached its window of full maturity. Medium-bodied, with layers of concentration, stunning blue, red, and black fruits intermixed with spring flowers, a subtle dosage of new oak, and a distinctive personality that is elegant while at the same time powerful and substantial, this is a multi-dimensional wine that was extremely approachable and drinkable in ...
WE95 This bottling, from the vineyard high up on Atlas Peak, is establishing itself as a real benchmark. The '07 is smooth and rich and vast in flavor, offering waves of blackberries, cherry pie, cassis and blackstrap molasses, with a delicious coating of sweet, smoky oak. It's impressive in youth, but so balanced, it should easily negotiate the years.
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
98 points
The 2004 Descendant, an old oak-aged blend of 92% Shiraz and 8% Viognier from a 12-year old vineyard, offers up notes of blackberries, ink, sweet truffles, and acacia flowers. There are 1,000 cases of this full-bodied, intense, rich blockbuster. It will drink well for 10-15 years.
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
96 points
A black color is followed by a seamless effort loaded with blackberry, honey, and flower aromas, and an extraordinarily long, concentrated finish. As with all great wines, tasting notes/descriptors just can’t do it justice. Among the recent SQN Syrahs, it is a strikingly elegant and powerful wine that has a decidedly French flair to it.
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
94+ points
Upgraded in score over my original rating, which was several points lower, Alfred Tesseron has done a remarkable job since 1994 with Pontet-Canet, which has been hitting first-growth levels since 2003. But the 2000 also shows exceptionally well. In need of another decade of cellaring, this dense purple wine has a classic nose of incense, charcoal, creme de cassis, and subtle new oak. Full-bodied, powerful, still very tannic, and shockingly backward, thi...
ST91. dark fruit, sweet spice and vanilla. The aromas are...
ST91. In the glass, this wine opens into an intense mosaic of spice, blackberry, red fruits, and sweet vanilla. Following this aromatic performance, the wine surges forth with a dense core of black cherry and hickory smoke. Peppered with notes of spice, red fruits, and sweet vanilla, soft mineral tannins accompany the black cherry core through the mid-palate and on to a long finish. HDV Belle Cousine is a right bank Bordeaux style blend (mainly Merlot), made in a joint venture by the Hyde Family...
RP89-91. raspberry and kirsch notes intermixed with laven...
RP89-91. 65% Grenache and 35% Syrah. Tyler Thomas used most of the stems, just as Pax Mahle did in 2007. The 2008 exhibits a slightly darker color as well as loads of raspberry and kirsch notes intermixed with lavender, earth, pepper, and spice. It, too, should be consumed during its first 4-5 years of life.
Deep ruby. A deeply pitched and distinctly different nose from what one usually finds in 10 year old RC as there are wonderfully dense and layered aromas of orange compote, red and black cherry along with the usual spice and floral notes, which introduces refined, pure and concentrated medium full flavors that possess the usual spectacular detail on the gorgeously persistent finish. This is beginning to lose its baby fat and the underlying sense of structure is becoming more prominent. The 1998 ...
