I tried to restrain myself, sipping this rare and stunning wine slowly but surely, but it was almost impossible not to down it in one, it was just so good. Supple and finely-boned tannins, a ton of white truffle and tobacco notes, gentle smoked earth, tannins still holding on to the now fully softened red fruits. Shared by a generous friend at 67 Pall Mall - and even luckier, I was simply walking past their table with lucky timing! Jacques Guinaudeau had arrived at the estate just two years earlier, in 1984, leasing the vines from his aunt Marie Robin. It took decades to come around, but right now it is singing.

92+ Dark dense ruby/purple, with very little evolution to the color, Lafleur’s 1986 seems frozen in time, a structured, tannic, backward monster that still needs considerable cellaring. No matter how much airing I have given this wine, it does not ever seem to emerge from its cloak of tannin and structure. The fruit seems sweet, and the wine has Lafleur’s telltale notes of kirsch liqueur intermixed with raspberries, minerals, flowers, and truffles. The wine is medium-bodied, weighty in the mouth, but so, so tannic and backward. Will it ever blossom? Anticipated maturity: 2008-2035. - Robert Parker

The 1986 Lafleur is a vintage that I have not tasted for some time, from a season that favoured the Left Bank over the Right. Nevertheless, it has a surprisingly high-toned nose with blackberry and blueberry fruit, cedar, iodine and antique bureau. The palate is clearly more austere and less complex than that of the 1985, quite linear and "correct" in style with, yes, a little rusticity. I find this larger format better than the handful of bottled examples that I have tasted, though I would broach this over the next decade and before the 1985. Tasted from ex-château magnum at Kate & Kon's 40-year vertical in Austria. -- Neal Martin