Really spicy and decadent with crushed flowers, fruit and some grilled-meat undertones. It’s full-bodied with tight, tensioned tannins that nicely frame the fruit. Reserved yet complex flavors. A thoroughly beautiful wine. Drink after 2023.

The 2018 Clos de Vougeot Grand Cru has quite a perfumed bouquet with brambly red fruit, sous-bois and wilted rose petals. This has delicacy and finesse. The palate is medium-bodied with a citrus-fresh entry, blood orange and marmalade infusing the dark berry fruit. Nicely proportioned with just a little oak to be soaked up on the chewy finish. Fine. Tasted blind at the Burgfest 2018 red tasting. -- Neal Martin

The harvest in 2018 started on September 4th. It is impossible not to love this wine, although it is entirely different than the previous vintage. Produced, as in 2017, exclusively from the parcel in Plante l'Abbé, it was made with an inclusion of 30% whole bunches, a slow ferment in open-top wood fermenters, and a maturation of 12 to 14 months in cask, approximately half new. The resulting wine is rich, almost thick and viscous, with a pronounced aroma of dark black fruit aroma and a touch of sweetness and spice. If it lacks the definition of the 2017 vintage, it still impresses with its power.

A mixed red crimson colour. The bouquet is soft and dour, while there is some volatility showing on the palate. Quite a long finish to this lightly red fruited wine. Another wine which builds very well but you have to give it time. Drink from 2034.

(90 - 92+ points) The 2018 Clos Vougeot Grand Cru, from Bouchard's domaine holdings—and only their holdings in the upper part of the vineyard, as the lower-lying plots are being replanted—reveals aromas of raspberries, red cherries, spices and rose petals, deftly framed by new oak. On the palate, it's medium to full-bodied, firm and compact; indeed, the wine was quite introverted when I tasted it, so it may well have been out of sorts.- WK