E. Guigal, Cote Rotie, La Landonne 2015

This is a profound wine, offering really striking depth of aromas and flavors with a resonance that really stops you still. Dark stones, ripe dark plums and blackberries, licorice, sarsaparilla, orange peel and cloves with still more spices floating in the midst. The palate has such perfectly captured intensity of ripe dark plums and blackberries that it is seemingly impenetrable for now. Yet, the detail is all here. It builds and fills the palate completely with ripe, espresso-laced blackberries, black cherries and dark plums and delivers such freshness at the finish. This is a triumph and up there with the greatest La Landonne releases. Try from 2027.

Impenetrably dense and dark, the 2015 Cote Rotie La Landonne is loaded with black olive, espresso and cassis fruit. It's full-bodied, rich and velvety in texture and nearly endless on the finish, yet it never seems overbearing or overripe, remaining vibrant and fun from start to finish. Right now, the tannins are prominent, giving the wine a dry, dusty sendoff, so give it a decade to mellow before opening a bottle.

The 2015 Côte Rôtie La Landonne is another wine that has perfection written all over it. Made in a more backward, concentrated, structured style, its inky purple color is followed by a mammoth bouquet of smoked black fruits, charcoal, camphor, and graphite, with more meaty notes developing with time in the glass. With a finish that won’t quit, this locked and loaded, full-bodied beast of a wine will be for patient consumers with cold cellars. It’s going to take a decade or more for it to be drinkable, but it might just be a 5- to 6-decade wine.

Deep, bright-rimmed purple. An exotically perfumed, expressive bouquet evokes dark fruit liqueur, spicecake, smoky bacon, incense, vanilla and incense. A sexy floral nuance emerges with air and carries onto the palate, which displays intense blueberry, cherry liqueur, candied licorice and floral pastille flavors that deepen and spread out steadily on the back half. The floral, bacon and mineral notes come back strong on a strikingly long, youthfully tannic finish, that leaves a juicy blue fruit note behind.