This well-filled, impeccably balanced wine starts with aromas of cherries, sweet berries, tobacco leaves, rose petals, vanilla bean oak and black walnuts. Its lushness is more reminiscent of what we are finding from the St. Juliens than of the Margaux set, and in that regard, Lascombes comes up a bigtime success in this vintage. Its flavors have a "drink me now" quality but its underlying tannins speak to its ability to age, and there is every reason to expect more than a decade of growth.

Good bright ruby. Blueberry and licorice on the nose, lifted by spicy oak. Chewy, lush and dense, but with a sappy quality giving shape to the fruit. Very tactile, solid wine with a saline quality suggesting energetic extraction. But this offers impressive mouth coverage and finishes broad and long, with nicely restrained sweetness. Wait until 2011.

Mcaurther