October 5, 2023 - Huge nose of salty strawberries, red cherries, intoxicating iodine, great great nose!! amazing tension and crisp red strawberries, huge mineral, zippy acidity, great great wine!!
May 27, 2023 - So, I'm going through emails yesterday about the release of the '20 vintage of this exact wine. I'd always wanted to try this wine but had not yet had the privilege......low and behold a few hours later Gabriel shows up on our doorstep with this '15 for our dinner at London Club! Freaky, right?
He said he slow ox'd it for a number of hours throughout the day. We tested it and thought it needed a brief but full decant so we gave it 30 min in the decanter while we did our 'at home tasting/nibbles' first, then back into the bottle it went for the restaurant.
Opened while slightly chilled at the restaurant and decided to chill it a little further, too. This is a shimmering, classy wine. Immediately the extravagant/perfumed/floral nose grabs your attention, in fact, I think the nose is a few years ahead of the palate and should get a 98 just by itself. Even with the decant, the wine still came across as slightly tight until open for another hour at the table. So, if you have any bottles of this '15 I'd do a pretty good full decant on it, say 3 hours to start, then see where it is? The palate to me at this youthful stage was a red/dark red fruited 96 so averaging the score out to a 97 for this bottle at this time with surely more upside in coming years. Gabriel, thanks so much for bringing this beautiful wine to our dinner! What a treat!
May 26, 2023 - I was looking for something different and special to share with our friends Mark and Carol and I select this bottle that I never had before and then neither.
Opened at 9am and left inside the cellar, by 7pm while at Marks he decanted it for about 30 min and then back into the bottle to go to the Jazz place…
Once there the nose showed pretty intriguing and broad while it was a bit shy, the body is medium, the acidity is bright as the sun can be, lots of tannins and the back bone to go the distance and to the next level. For me at this stage it lacks complexity, maybe this bottle wasn’t handled properly, maybe it was not decanted long enough? Not paired with the right food? Or maybe I was distracted by the nice music, good food and fun talk…
Whatever it was at least we had a memorable Wine-Jazz-Night and I hope this wine gets to the full potential in some 3-5 years from now!
93++ today.
June 10, 2021 - Great..but the price(s)...insane.
January 24, 2020 - Decanted 2,5 hours. Still pretty young (as expected). I guess this needs at least 5-7 years more in the cellar. 93(-) pts. at the moment.
December 15, 2019 - Huge nose of strawberries, tobacco leaves, oriental spices, soy sauce... Delicious taste of salty cherries, quite mineral, lenght of 90 sec, BRAVO!!
January 7, 2019 - This is the 3rd bottle tried, and showed that disappointing green streak that the first bottle displayed, yet was evident from the 2nd bottle (which I rated 93 pts.). A bit disturbing...
November 10, 2018 - A big improvement over the last bottle of this, which was marred by a green streak that was muted here and expressed itself instead as a mild herbal backbone to the core of bright red fruit.
September 27, 2018 - For how massive it is its still got great structure and acidity. Just opened. That's a baby.
September 13, 2018 - Too early, of course, but I found the wine marred by a green streak I couldn’t ignore. Notes of raspberry and forest floor, good depth, but we had two bottles that displayed the identical greenness.