Golden color; creamy, lush and dense, ripe with honey and vanilla; deep, smooth and off-dry with dense flavors and a rich finish.

A partly barrel-fermented (in Austrian demi-muids) blend of Syrah, Grenache and Rolle, the 2018 Cotes de Provence Sainte Victoire 946 is a spicy, oaky wine, completely different in style from most Côtes de Provence rosés. But once you wrap your head around the style, it's an impressive effort, offering enough citrus, melon and peach flavors to support the wood. Just drink up, as I suspect with time the wood will dominate.

Svelte, with a crisp minerally composure to the dried raspberry and berry flavors that are well-structured. Finish offers notes of forest floor, with floral accents. Drink now through 2024. 4,380 cases made.

Gentle vanilla notes wrap themselves around ripe Mirabelle plum fruit on the nose of this wine. The palate continues with this scented, gentle smoothness that fills palate and mind. The dry finish reveals concentration.

This is a very good wine with succulent black fruits, richness, great aromatics, and a juicy finish. Gourmet in style, with mouthwatering salinity on the finish that you also get in 2014 and is less clear in the earlier vintages. Eric Boissenot consultant as of this vintage.

Blackberries are the dominant fruit along with hints of crab apple and cinnamon spice. This has a more gourmet overtone than the 2011, and is a little richer overall in terms of structure and weight. Still ready to drink now, with the lovely hints of smoked oak that were found in the 2009. A good choice for opening now.

Deeper in colour than the 2009, as you might expect from a heftier vintage. This is ready to drink now, although fresh acidities abound, and concentrated black fruit notes are still evident meaning that it should stay the course for a good while yet, and is almost certainly not at its peak. Different style of pleasure here from the 2009 - more spice, cloves, cassis, the Cabernet Sauvignon showing dominance.

This 'primus inter pares' has seen some upheaval while changing into French hands a couple of years ago and might herald stylistic change not welcomed by admirers of this true custodian of traditional Brunello. This Rosso di Montalcino from an outstanding vintage, with great acidity and surprisingly soft tannins clinging to the concentrated fruit, seems less austere than in the past, but is still in a class of its own.

The 2010 Puligny-Montrachet Les Folatières 1er Cru has an intense and quite powerful bouquet, richer than the Chavy, with scents of dried honey, wax resin, orange peel and peach skin aromas all underpinned by fine mineralité and tension. The palate is very poised and focused, delivering impressive weight and tension and sappy green apple notes mixed with Nashi pear and spices. It just stumbles a little toward the finish, where I would have liked more terroir expression, but otherwise, excellent. Tasted at Sarah Marsh’s 2010 white burgundy tasting in London.

The 2010 Puligny-Montrachet Les Combettes 1er Cru has just a touch of reduction on the nose, but far less than Fichet’s Les Referts tasted alongside, thus allowing the mineralité to show through, along with hints of custard creams and fresh figs in the background. The palate is very well balanced with a fine line of acidity, offering citrus fruit mixed with black currant leaf and crushed stone, and delivering real tension and penetration toward the finish. This is impressive. Tasted at Sarah Marsh’s 2010 white burgundy tasting in London.

Rubbery, reduced, powerfully fruity nose. Lots of aromatic volume here, giving menthol, nettle and black cherry. Soft structure, very expressive flavour.

This shares the glorious ripeness of Clau de Nell’s 2015 Vin de Loire Grolleau (also recommended here). Its scents of black cherry and violet fill the mouth in a burst of freshness, clean and lasting. Tannins keep it earthbound, grounded in youthful black-pepper spice. Cellar it, and the tannins and fruit will merge into something beautiful.

Interesting cornichon topnote on sufficiently ripe fruit and just slightly dry sensation on the end. But no offputting mousiness. A proper lively, light red. This tastes healthy! (

Biodyamically grown on grés and red silex. Wonderfully expressive combination of fruit, acidity and the grip of the terroir. Super pure. Very linear and suave. Long and admirable. Acacia honey and green apples. Should continue to develop for many a long year. Needs food at this point. Lots to chew on. Very persistent. Severe, in the very best way.

Healthy crimson. Spicy and dense with a really rigorously dry finish and no shortage of tannins. The merest hint of horse. Uncompromising – a bit like the late Anne-Claude Leflaive who founded this domaine. Rather admirable – and very very French. I think Alice Feiring might love this.

This was a struggling biodynamic vineyard that attracted the attention of Anne-Claude Leflaive and her husband, Christian Jacques; they purchased it in 2008. Leflaive has since passed away, but the couple had hired Sylvain Potin, who continues to farm the Demeter certified property. The grolleau vines range from 60 to 90 years old, growing in silty clay over tuffeau, and the ripe fruit of the 2015 took this wine to a friendly sort of beauty from what is often a gruff grape...

From vines aged 60 to 90 years on grés and red silex on tuffeau. Ambient yeast and aged for 11 months on fine lees in tronconic cask. Bottled in September 2015. Firm taffeta fruit on the front palate and more fruity appeal than its Cabernet stablemates. Quite satisfying on the finish. Very different!

This late-release version sports a broad and slightly mature feel, with roasted meat, dried bay leaf, tobacco and smoldering alder wood notes swirling around a core of steeped plum, blackberry and fig fruit flavors. Shows a lovely tug of loam at the very end. Distinctive. Syrah, Grenache and Roussanne. Drink now through 2024. 1,000 cases made, 200 cases imported.

Unusual on the nose because it has lots of peppery Syrah character but also a definite red-fruit quality. Beautifully fine texture, great restraint, although it opens up in the glass to a more fragrant side and marked persistence. It smells really cool even though the wine itself is room temperature. Still youthful but coming into its stride, fresh and cool on the finish.

Opaque ruby. Highly fragrant, mineral-accented aromas of ripe dark fruits, candied licorice and woodsmoke develop an Indian spice nuance in the glass. Fleshy and impressively concentrated but energetic as well, offering bitter cherry and boysenberry flavors that become sweeter with air. Finishes with strong, mineral-driven persistence and velvety tannins that sneak up slowly.