Last night I drank a bottle of 1985 Cheval Blanc with some friends and it was beautiful! I love the sweet tobacco, cherry berry character with fine tannins. It had such a long finish, I gave it 97 points. But remember 1985 because most people think of 1982 when they think of vintages of Cheval Blanc in the ‘80s – ’85 is a beauty, so is ’83. MY VLOG (March 2012)

Medium garnet-brick colored, the 1985 Cheval Blanc sashays out of the glass with provocative notes of sandalwood, cinnamon stick, cardamom, dried lavender and wilted roses over a core of new leather, cigar box, prunes, raisin cake and dusty soil. Medium-bodied, soft and silken textured, it has tons of mature, melt-in-your-mouth flavors and a very long exotic spice-laced finish. LPB

The 1985 Cheval Blanc has always been one of the picks of the vintage for what was a fecund decade for the Saint-Émilion. This example shows similarly to previous bottles. It has a fragrant bouquet with sandalwood, clove and chestnut, maybe here even a touch of brettanomyces? It is only slight. The palate is beautifully balanced with melted tannin. The Cabernet Franc in full flight – hints of bell pepper and cedar, a surfeit of fruit. Maybe it lacks the precision of more recent vintages but how can you resist its charm. Impossible! It is a wonderful wine, but I wonder...was its heyday around the turn of the millennium? Tasted blind at Chez Brunce lunch.

Truffle, tobacco, plum, flowers, cherry, earth and spice scents opened to a plush, opulent, sensuous, medium/full bodied, lush, sexy, Cheval Blanc that is drinking beautifully today.

Medium red, with a hint of amber at the rim. Pungent, highly complex nose combines redcurrant, autumn leaves, sweet tobacco, smoked meat, truffle and mint. Dense and silky, with a firm spine of acidity giving the wine excellent penetration and vinosity. Impeccably balanced and sweet. Finishes firmly tannic, with superb subtle persistence. A particularly lovely '85, in the elegant style of the vintage. Drink now through 2015.

Beginning to show maturity. Spice and cedar aromas give way to a silky texture and flavors of tobacco and roasted fruits. Drink or hold.--Cheval-Blanc vertical. TM

Served blind at the end of a run of Pomerols and quite at home in this sequence but denser, more savoury, a little gamey and still so alive! Great concentration.
JR - June 2017

Mature bright ruby; a fully mature, heady bouquet: warm, sweet, faintly farmyardy - in the nicest way - and a touch of autumnal undergrowth (autumn outside, autumn inside), and minerally on agitiation; a perfectly balanced, sheer silk textured, fresh and flowing mature middleweight with all its tannin absorbed; sweetly ripe, long, fragrant, seductive and beautifully harmonious mature St Emilion, still with a very fine finish. This has been tasting wonderful since around its fifteenth birthday, when I noted it as being “ripe yet fresh, with a suave, prolonged, gently spicy sweetness; long, graceful, scented and at the start of a delightful maturity; no excess, beautiful now, years in hand. Lovely.” For nearly ten years it has been a treat, and on this occasion it was glorious, the star of the evening for most people. I wouldn’t push its keeping too long, but it should be perfect up to its twenty-fifth birthday. As value goes at this level, this is value.