De Vogue's 2007 Bonnes Mares calls to mind sweet-tart black raspberry candies and herbal lozenges along with notes of brown spices and smoky black tea. Rich sedate and provocatively sweet and perfumed this manages simultaneously to preserve a saline savor and suggestion of lobster shell reduction that precludes anyone calling it a "fruit bomb." The smoky and - for lack of a better covering term - "mineral" elements accompany this Bonnes Mares' soothing finish all the way to its distant end. No doubt there is at least a decade's worth of seduction and intrigue on hand but here too I would not hesitate to relish them significantly sooner. -David Schildknecht

A surprisingly expressive nose displays a broad panoply of ripe floral and fruit aromas that include red raspberry cherry plum violet and rose surrounded by warm soil tones that can also be found on the powerful and tautly muscled large scaled flavors blessed with ample underlying reserves of dry extract that render the relatively refined tannins invisible at present on the explosive and exceptionally deep finish where notes of citrus and floral resurface. A seriously impressive wine of Zen-like harmony and poise.

18/20 Bright crimson - very pure and healthy-looking and smelling. Great purity. Complete, ripe and healthy nose. Heady with masses of ripe but savoury (as opposed to sweet) fruit that really drives this wine across the palate. Racy, silky, with mass and depth. Super clean and bracing. Very fine with great pace and energy. Clean but not powerful finish, reverberates but all fruit rather than mineral notes.