Smoke, licorice, vanilla bean, toast, ripe and over ripe plum notes create the perfume. This is incredibly dense, sensuous and glycerin filled, the wine slips and slides all over your palate. With massive concentration and intensity of flavor, the wine is sexy, showy and flamboyant. There is no sensation of heat in the 16% percent finish. This is a wine for tasters seeking a night of hedonistic pleasure. Tasted May 2013

Saturated ruby. Deep aromas of red and black fruits, violet, gunflint, licorice and bitter chocolate, complemented by a sexy oak-derived note of hickory smoke. Large-scaled and sweet, but with terrific precision and refinement to the flavors of dark berries, chocolate, licorice and minerals. Finishes polished and long. Not as opulent or exotic as the 2009, but offers exceptional sweetness and size while managing to maintain impressive verve and thrust. A great 2010.

Tasted blind at the Southwold Bordeaux 2010 tasting. The Tertre-Roteboeuf has an exquisite bouquet: very intense with well defined black fruit, touches of cooked meat and dried herbs and what feels like a touch of Cabernet Franc even though there is none in the blend! The palate is smooth and silky, voluptuous and sensual to the touch with lush Merlot dominating the finish. This textbook Tertre-Roteboeuf is a joy from start to finish. Tasted January 2014.

Fully saturated ruby. Knockout nose combines blackcurrant, blackberry, coffee, menthol, graphite and licorice. The palate offers an uncanny combination of sweetness and penetrating power, with expansive, fine-grained flavors of black and red fruits, mint and sweet spices. The very long, rising finish conveys an impression of energy and great finesse, thanks to harmonious acids that lift and extend the wine's fruit and spices. One of the wines of the vintage: lay this one down.

St Emilion Grand Cru (35hl/ha, 15+%) [85M/15CF] Dense, slightly ‘roasted’, dark, ripe fruit to smell; large scale, powerful wine, rich, ample and elegant, defined by particularly fine tannin and a vital acidity; very pure, sweetly ripe fruit, juicy yet racily fresh too, long, subtle and complex, typically full of mouthcoating aromas, and terrific scented length. A touch warm on the finish, necessarily, but the usual lovely combination of power and delicacy. 2022-40+ [M.Schuster, Bordeaux Mar/Apr 2011]

Deep garnet in color, the 2010 Le Tertre Roteboeuf reveals notes of leather, cedar and balsamic with a core of raisin cake and unsmoked cigars. Full-bodied, the palate is firm and chewy with a lively line cutting through the dried berries and savory layers, finishing just a little warm. March 2020 LPB

Tasted blind. More mature browning colour than most. And very mature aromas of dried fruit and beef extract and leather. Mocha too. Maturing rather too quickly for the structure but has fruit sweetness and a touch of orange. Slightly raisined on the finish. I was rather disappointed when this was revealed and raised my score slightly after tasting it again. I find this a very confusing wine to taste blind because I always love drinking it but don’t score it highly if I taste it blind with its peers. (JH)