Truffle, Cuban cigar wrapper, exotic spice, licorice and lilacs create the complex set of aromatics. Powerful yet poised, rich and fresh, dense and velvety, the finish remains with you for close to 60 seconds. The end notes deliver spicy, silky, creamy tannins, ripe, dark plums and darker red fruits that fill the palate. The wine is structured with all the right stuff to age for decades. Produced from 100% Merlot, the harvest started September 8, finishing September 28. The wine reached 14.5% alcohol with a pH of 3.6 . This is the wine of the vintage.

I love the aromatics to this with crushed berries, violets and black olives. Hints of vanilla and some caramel. Decadent. Full-bodied and round with very creamy tannins that melt into the wine. It starts off slowly and and then kicks off a few seconds later. The tannins are extremely polished and refined. Hard not to drink now, but wait.

The 2017 Chateau Petrus is, as always, 100% Merlot that's from the top of the Pomerol plateau. The 2017 is an incredibly elegant, perfumed example from this estate that has terrific cassis, raspberry, and red currants fruits as well as lots of floral and violet hints, medium to full body, a beautiful spine of acidity, and building tannins. It's not a blockbuster like the 2015 and 2016, yet it’s flawlessly balanced, with stunning purity of fruit and a great, great finish. Give bottles a solid 7-8 years, and it should keep for 20-25+.

The 2017 Petrus is simply stunning. A rich, deep and voluptuous wine endowed with rapturous beauty. Vivid and wonderfully alive, with ripe, polished tannins, the 2017 is simply impeccable. Jean-Claude Berrouet told me he had never seen a harvest at Petrus stretch out over a three full weeks. Olivier Berrouet added that the berries were quite small. He opted for longer skin contact than normal, about 30 days, with pumpovers of one volume of wine per day at the beginning of fermentation. Even in the early going, Petrus is shaping up to be truly magnificent. - vinous.com, May 2018

The 2017 Pétrus, as usual, is a wine that bides its time and I left my glass for five minutes before broaching. Bottled at the beginning of August 2019 it gradually unfurls with a mixture of red and black fruit, those pressed irises that I remarked upon out of barrel, now a hint of steaming espresso in the background. The palate is very smooth and quite plush on the entry. It has a frame of very pliant tannins, notes of mulberry mixed with black truffle and white pepper. This is a gentle and self-effacing, nonchalant Pétrus, not a headline grabber like the succeeding vintage, rather a Pétrus that just wants to be consumed. It deserves four or five years in bottle to manifest more secondary notes, and it will go on to give 25-30 years of drinking pleasure, taking account of its unerring longevity. www.vinous.com

Very dark and super-fragrant. Beautifully intense cassis aroma, very pure, gorgeous dusty graphite nose, and a light note of violets. Beautifully dry and with finest of textures. Opens up to sweet spice and some red fruit. Iris root – used in perfume – says winemaker Olivier Berrouet. Caressing texture, supple. Becomes ever more floral with air. Incredibly smooth. A beauty. - Julia Harding, jancisrobinson.com, April 2018