From a 375ml this time - consistent quality as always. Lovely fresh nose showed strawberries, red berries, some earthy notes, some floral touches, beautiful stuff. The palate had a lovely zip to it, with fresh strawberry flavours, raspberries, a squeeze of lemon and a bit of bottle-age showing with a touch of white meat and some mineral in the finish. Nice stuff as always, and so versatile with food. Yummy, a great way to start the meal.

From a 375ml - still really young and a little tight though, it took the good part of half-an-hour to start opening up. Yellow-gold in colour, this had a beautiful if slightly subtle nose that showed little drops of kerosene, wafting scents of apricots, peaches and red apples, a whiff of white flowers and lots of steely mineral scents. I really liked it. The palate echoed the serious minerality on the nose, opening with a steely edge with a nice lemony hit. Really elegant, lots of finesse, but also with a lovely integrated freshness that made it fun to drink. I just though it missed a bit a depth and length at the back-end at first though. Thankfully, it opened up with time to show dried figs, lemons and flowers drifting alongside a really intense, stony minerality - almost like drinking crushed rocks towards the long, clinging finish. With even more time, the wine started to take on deeper flavours of beeswax, honey, lime and spice. Not the most profound Clos St Hune, but this had a nice weight and heft to it wed to typical precision and focus, so that it was a perfect foil for our lobster and prawn dishes. I wish we had caught this a few years down the road, but nevertheless, always a nice wine to have with a meal.

Served after an hour in the decanter, this was quite clearly the wine of the night for me in the midst of very stern competition. As good a Beaucastel as I ever had - it just about blew me away. The wine had a killer nose, almost Burgundian in its fligreed, lacy scents. Lots of lovely dark fruit aromas - plums and black cherries - some smoked meat, dried earth, flowers, glowing garrigue scents, like walking through a Provencal garden - wonderful stuff that you could smell from the moment the sommelier brought the decanter out. The palate, though just a tad less developed than the nose, was every bit as lovely. It had soft plush tannins, beautiful acidity, and lovely flavours of dark cherries and blackberries floating across the mouth with interesting little bits of spice and meat that dotted the pure fruit as the wine wound its way into a long finely defined finish where there were little whiffs of smoky mineral. With more time, some crystallined flavours of red dates, maraschinos and sweet spice started emerging.There was just an amazing freshness and purity to it all and a fine sense of structure and balance that bodes well for the wine's future. A glorious wine. I can only hope that the couple of bottles back home in my cellar have been stored as well. The only problem now is how to keep my hands off them.

As always with d'Yquem, this was a really nice wine, but I certainly would not put this alongside the better vintages of recent times. It started off a bit strange, with a whoosh of volatile, high-toned scents, a bit of glycerine there too. With a bit of air and a few gentle swirls, this died down and the wine began to show lots of candied orange scents, some pineapples, sultanas, figs, lots of honey, a touch salted caramel, tiny bits of earth, some coconut, all-in-all a lovely, complex nose, just on the cusp of maturity. The palate had a lovely, almost Barsac-like freshness to it, a reflection of the vintage perhaps, along with nice flavours of sweet baking spices, Christmas-cake-like stuff - cinamon, nutmeg, cloves - and lots of lovely dried fruit tones, some figs, apricots I thought, and then bits of caramel and toffee. Definitely not the richest or most opulent of d'Yquems, but it did have a nice sense of energy and focus, and a fresh, bright finish with lots of spice, dried flowers, maybe pear, all lingering away in the mouth. An early drinking vintage, very approachable, but I would give this at least 5 more years to put on a bit more complexity. Overall, excellent without quite being exciting or profound - quite an achievement though when one considers the vintage. Very enjoyable.

What a treat, from a 375ml, rather past-it, but still a pleasure to enjoy with friends. Really tight nose, balsamic notes, woody tones, soy and earth, sous bois, very old smelling, with just a linger of plums, some flowery tones - almost completely tertiary. The palate was slightly over the hill. It had lots of twigs, earth and smoke, some dried plums, haw flakes, raisins, still really fresh on the acidity, but the fruit had almost dried out. The tannins were still present, rather drying, a bit austere and the finish was a bit short. Still quite fun to drink, but it would have been much better a decade back.