Chateau Pavie Macquin Premier Grand Cru Classe B, Saint-Emilion Grand Cru 2010

Starting to show just a hint of maturity and evolution, the 2010 Château Pavie Macquin is still ruby/plum-hued with a complex nose of ripe red and black cherries, chalky minerality, damp earth, and white truffles. These carry to a wonderfully pure, medium to full-bodied Pavie Macquin offering tons of minerality, a layered, elegant mouthfeel, good acidity, and one hell of a great finish. Drink this complex, satisfying, layered wine over the coming two decades. Drink 2025-2045.

A towering, statuesque wine, the 2010 Pavie-Macquin is distinguished by its vertical explosiveness and soaring intensity. Red cherry jam, plums and dried flowers are some of the many aromas and flavors that open up as the 2010 gains breadth over time. Naturally, the 2010 is still a very young wine, but it is incredibly impressive just the same, not to mention one of the highlights of the morning.

Super compacted with incredible intensity of minerals, black fruits, licorice and spices. Full and dense. Wild fruit that goes on for minutes. A little firm as always but will open nicely.

This is always an extremely masculine, dense, burly wine, and the 2010, which tips the scales at 14.5% alcohol (just slightly under that of the 2009), has a final blend of 80% Merlot and the rest virtually all Cabernet Franc, with just 1% Cabernet Sauvignon. Loads of crushed rock and chalkiness, along with licorice, black truffle, smoked game and black fruits dominate the aromatics and flavor. Backward, formidably endowed, full-bodied and almost atypically massive and huge, with gargantuan extraction, this is a wine for patient connoisseurs to forget about for close to a decade. Anticipated maturity: 2022-2040+.

(84% merlot, 14% cabernet franc and 2% cabernet sauvignon): Bright saturated ruby. Vibrant aromas of cassis, licorice, bitter chocolate, herbs and sexy oak. Tightly wound, primary and uncompromising, conveying a low-pH mouth feel to its medicinal black fruit, espresso and pungent spice and mineral flavors. This wine's superb richness and weight (the label says 14.5% alcohol) are currently hidden by its firm spine. The brooding, youthfully imploded, slightly saline finish builds slowly and inexorably. Lay this beauty down and forget about it for a decade.

The 2010 Pavie Macquin has a rather lovely menthol/star anis scented bouquet, ripe and extrovert but demonstrating more composure than the Troplong-Mondot alongside. The palate is medium-bodied with a sweet core of black plummy fruit, slightly lower acidity than expected but it remains well balanced with a caressing soy and black pepper tinged finish that fans out nicely. Excellent, if more exotic than I would have liked in the context of the growing season. Tasted at the BI Wines & Spirits 10-Year On tasting.

(3.3 pH; 15% alcohol) Deep violet-ruby. Knockout bomb of a nose offers perfumed scents of ripe black cherry and cassis complicated by cinnamon, incense and bay leaf. Decadently sweet and opulent, with seamless flavors of superripe black cherry, coffee and underbrush. This impressive wine finishes very long, with noble, peppery tannins that will require at least mid-term aging to resolve fully. There's a trace of warmth at the back, but I would never have guessed that this wine clocks in at 15%. Very well done.