This is among the world's most expensive wines (as far as I know only certain late harvest wines from Germany are more expensive). It has a gorgeously bright dark ruby/purple color and extremely complex aromatics of fresh herbs, Asian spices, creamy cherries, super-ripe blackberries, and vanilla-imbued oak. This superb wine offers a mouthful of silky-textured cherries, blueberries, plums, boysenberries, earth, minerals, and spiced oak. This masterpiece is full-bodied, dense (yet extremely elegant and defined), thickly-textured, and immensely concentrated. Moreover, I sensed this wine was holding a significant amount in reserve!

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I hadn't tried this since the big RC tasting in 2007 but even in the interim 10 years the nose remains relatively inexpressive though with extended airing, subtle aromas of black fruit, hoisin, spice, underbrush, anise and violets emerge. The palate impression is one of understatement as the refined, delineated and manifestly classy flavors offer incredible breed and fantastic complexity on the focused, linear and hugely long finish. This brilliant effort will live for decades and remains quite youthful and while it could be approached now it is clearly still very much on the way up. Tasted three time recently with entirely consistent notes.

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