Medium-plus colour. Brooding aromas of dark cherry and cassis that are framed with warm, sweet coffee. Mouth-filling, slightly acid-shy but good texture and fantastic length. There’s a slight bitterness that mingles with the creamy fruit in the mid-palate, tannin is fine with the merest leading-edge of astringency. Really, this a bottle to wallow in rather than intellectualise over, yet the IQ is there if you want to challenge it. Very impressive indeed.

Deep colour. The nose shows more than a passing resemblance to the Combottes but is more tightly wound – it does take on a more musky and heavy impression with time but never opens out to the level of that wine. Über-concentration, achingly intense in the mid-palate and super-long. Behind is (almost) hidden tannin with just an edge of grain. This is Combottes’ bigger brother, seems less mineral and focused but then that could the masking effect of the extra concentration. Leave the glass still for a while and it fills with toasty oak aromas. Very expensive, but very impressive too.