The 2006 Phélan Ségur is a beautifully balanced and stylish middleweight in the making that strikes me as the very epitome of the style of this vintage. The bouquet is deep, clean and impressively classy, as it offers up a fine mélange of red cherries, gravelly soil tones, tobacco leaf, fresh herb tones. coffee and a judicious framing of cedar. On the palate the wine is medium-full, long and focused, with lovely nascent complexity, ripe, fruit tannins, fine focus and impressive length and grip on the finish. Really a very classy example of the vintage, which is perfectly comfortable in its skin and which was not forced in any manner in the cellar. An impressive ’06.

A very good effort from this estate the dark ruby/purple-tinged 2006 reveals sweet smoky black currant fruit along with a hint of crushed rocks which provides a distinctive minerality. Round ripe and medium to full-bodied with sweet tannin it can be consumed over the next decade.

In recent years, the Gardiniers of Phélan-Ségur seem to have become preoccupied with wood, generally too much. It’s the same in 2006, and it is a shame, because everything else about this wine is balanced—the fruit is ripe and sweet and there is some freshness from a cranberry note. It just needs the wood to become less dominant.