The first vintage made at the new winery, the 2008 Cos d’Estournel is drinking beautifully today, with terrific complexity as well as a silky, polished style on the palate. Made from 85% Cabernet Sauvignon, 13% Merlot, and 2% Cabernet Franc and revealing copious amounts of crème de cassis and black cherry fruit intermixed with notes of toasted bread, spice, and cedar, it hits the palate with full-bodied richness, a silky, sexy texture, and sweet tannin. Count me in as a fan. This beauty can be drunk today or cellared for another 15-20 years.

The medium to deep garnet colored 2008 Cos d'Estournel is blended of 85% Cabernet Sauvignon, 13% Merlot and 2% Cabernet Franc. Pow! The nose explodes with notes of baked cherries, preserved plums, fried herbs, beef drippings and warm cassis with wafts of wood smoke, salami and tobacco leaf. Medium-bodied, the palate is elegant and earthy/savory in character, sporting beautifully ripe, grainy tannins and bags of freshness, finishing on a lingering mineral note. - Lisa Perrotti-Brown

Purple core with fuchsia rim. Creme de cassis and kirsch liquor dominates the nose with a fragrant rose petal perfume for good measure. A tertiary nose of loamy gravelly soil adds complexity. A sweet entry of spicy black cherry and cassis with blackberry in plus concentration expands to a glycerol mid-palate and opulent ripe tannins. The rocky gravelly clay loamy soil is evident early. Excellent! A top wine for Saint Estephe.

In the nose, the wine is spicy, with cedar, tobacco, blackberries, black currants, and green, peppery herbs. Concentrated, chewy, and a bit chunky, the wine strives to be elegant, and almost gets there, but it just can’t quite make it. With 1 hour of air, there is some improvement. Drink from 2025-2040.

The 2008 Cos d’Estournel had one of the most backward, reticent bouquets that I encountered during my tasting. This is so sultry and broody, begrudgingly offering some lovely brambly red fruit mixed with pencil box. The palate is medium-bodied with firm tannin, plenty of black fruit laced with allspice, black pepper and sage, leading to a dense and concentrated finish that should see this age for 20 or 30 years. It does not really serve as a forerunner to the blockbuster 2009 because this is cut from a completely different cloth. (Tasted at BI Wine & Spirit’s annual 10-Year On tasting.) -- Neal Martin

93+ Tasted ex-chateau and single blind in Southwold. This bottle of Cos d’Estournel 2008 is not as scintillating as the one tasted at the property, but it remains a great performer. Compared to its peers it is more forward on the nose: quite meaty and savoury, some expressive, slightly herbaceous Cabernet Franc here that I have not noticed previously. The palate is medium-bodied with good extraction: fleshy and supple in the mouth, a lot of creamy new oak and perhaps just lacking the mineralite on the finish that I discerned on other bottles. Very fine indeed although it will improve with bottle age.

This has a slight hint of the vintage's crisp, angular feel, but there are impressive layers of fruit here, with a bright mineral edge cutting through the damson plum and red currant notes. This has put on a little bit of weight in the bottle, too. Showing well.—Non-blind Cos-d'Estournel vertical (December 2015). Drink now through 2021. 20,000 cases made. –JM