Another stellar showing for this beauty. Roses, cigar box, black cherries, and spice open the perfume. The palate, is lush, opulent, fresh, and long, with layers of flamboyant, perfectly ripe, dark, red fruits. Popped and poured, this is simply pleasure in your glass. Drink from 2023-2035.

Tasted at Bordeaux Index's "10-Year On" tasting in London. The Cos d'Estournel 2003 has a more flamboyant, sumptuous bouquet compared to the Montrose with luscious redcurrant, raspberry, vanilla and graphite scents that soar from the glass. The palate is full-bodied, but I feel that it has lost weight in recent years as it sheds its puppy fat. This is a very focused Saint Estephe, very composed with fine definition and minerality towards the long finish. At the moment it stands side by side with the Montrose, but both remain true to their style.

With its aromas of new wood, spice and black fruits, this promises from the start to be a powerful, polished wine. It is dense, very ripe (from the high percentage of Merlot in the blend), but still packed with tannins. It’s a massive wine, bringing together the heat of 2003 with the big tannins of Saint-Estèphe.

Harvest finished this year on September 25. The 2003 Cos d'Estournel is a blend of 68% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot and 2% Cabernet Franc. It has a deep garnet-brick color and quite an herbal nose with notions of dried Mediterranean herbs and roasted meats over a core of crème de cassis, stewed plums and unsmoked cigars plus a touch of new leather. Full, rich, concentrated and decadent in the mouth, the palate, though medium-bodied, packs a wallop of fruit with plenty of earthy/savory accents and an herbal lift to the finish. - Lisa Perrotti-Brown

The 2003 Cos d'Estournel was showing wonderfully when I last tasted it at the vertical in 2018, yet five years on, I wonder whether that point in time represented its apex? Here, it has a concentrated bouquet with mulberry, stewed plums, touches of licorice and leather, slowly moving into its secondary stage. The palate is medium-bodied and has a menthol-infused entry with medicinal, Mediterranean-infused notes I did not observe before. Bold and powerful, but at 20 years of age, for the first time, I wonder whether it is losing some of its freshness and terroir expression. Tasted at the château. -- Neal Martin

This sports a pretty juicy edge, with dark currant and fig flavors and a hint of bramble in the mix. Ample tobacco, ganache and humus notes add range and character, leading to a long, smoldering finish. The slightly grainy structure is the only blip here.—Blind '01/'03/'05 Bordeaux retrospective (December 2017). Drink now through 2030. - JM

Excellent quality and surprisingly fresh given the vintage, this wine is clearly ready to drink now, however there’s no rush to drink this urgently - one of the key markers of a great Bordeaux wine is that, even if it evolves quickly, it reaches a point where it stops and sticks – and I feel that is what we have here. Expect the full array of soft leather, truffle, spice and fig. In early August, technical director Dominique Arangoïts remembers smelling cooked fruit in the vines at night-time. The levels of malic acid were one of the lowest on record, and the alcohol fairly reasonable also. This has aged far better than expected, no doubt helped by the proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon, as well as the clay subsoils of St-Estèphe and the old Merlot vines (between 80 and 100 years old). The harvest was finished by 25 September, earlier than most in the appellation.