Smell of chalk and minerals with dark fruits follow through to a full body, with chewy tannins and structure and a long finish. Bitter chocolate and dark fruits. 90% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc, and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon.

Deep, beefy and baked black fruit nose. Palate is thick, voluptuous and soft and the fruit powerful and unrelenting. A brute but impressive in its style.

The Bellevue Mondotte, which should be a blend of 90% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5% Cabernet Franc, had not quite finished its malolactic fermentation when I tasted it in early April. Cropped at 22hl/ha and raised entirely in new oak, it has a hedonistic, very generous, ostentatious bouquet that you might think was born three years earlier. The palate is very ripe and decadent with soft tannins. There is a lot of wood to be subsumed and there is a distinct lactic/chocolate note towards the finish that cuts away a little abruptly. Tasted April 2013.

Drink 2020-2035 (90% Merlot, 5% each of Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. 100% new French oak.) Colour of elderberry juice. Smells rather like it too. Very ripe, very intense but not porty! Highly extracted, deep in char but the fruit is compact. Tannins also compact and firm but not hard or bitter. Extreme but balanced. Just not my style. (JH)