A medium, medium-plus intermediate age colour. The nose starts a little dumb but slowly adds width, depth and dimension – it’s about understated but polished fruit and a blend of spicy herbs. Like the nose, the palate needs about 45 minutes to one hour to get into a good place but then you have a mouthful of silky texture, decent concentration, the sweetly fresh fruit that is the hallmark of the vintage and a really super length that mixes faint caramel and oak flavours. Very well balanced and, like many 2002s, still partly in its shell – but this has super potential – I should say it also wasn’t bad on the night!