Reductive flintiness, smoke and red currant shine on the nose of this wine. The tart finesse of the red currant carries onto the slender, taut palate where freshness and elegance reign. Purity and intensity radiate from a concentrated core that seems weightless, giving a bright, sublimely vivid wine. ANNE KREBIEHL MW

(91-94 points) (half of these vines are 70 years old, the other half 60): Moderately saturated medium red. Musky, soil-driven scents of fresh red fruits, crushed rock, flint and rose petal. Penetrating and sharply delineated, offering terrific intensity to its flavors of red berries, sappy cherry, minerals and blood orange. At once salty and juicy, this very long wine leaves the palate perfumed. Stehly compares this wine to a Musigny in its youthful strictness, and it strikes me as a classic young Clos Saint-Denis that will need time in bottle to expand. Stehly used to work mostly with spicy Cadus barrels for this wine but now uses one-third each Berthomieu and Tonnelerie du Val du Loire for his Clos Saint-Denis, as he feels these barrels are at once sweeter and more delicate. -- Stephen Tanzer