One of the highlights of the range is the 2018 Bonnes Mares Grand Cru, a striking wine that offers up aromas of wild berries, rose petals, grilled squab and burning embers. On the palate, it's full-bodied, layered and multidimensional, with refined tannins but serious depth and structure. This is a muscular wine from Domaine de la Vougeraie, and it will prove long lived.

The 2016 Bonnes-Mares Grand Cru, also 100% whole cluster fruit, had a very open-knit, expressive bouquet that maybe felt a little monotone when compared directly with the Charmes-Chambertin. The palate is medium-bodied with abundant red berry fruit, almost pastille-like in purity, quite sensual although just missing that knockout, killer blow on the linear finish. This Bonnes-Mares prefers to play it safe. I would like to see that killer instinct that elevated the 2015 to a higher level.

Tasted blind, the 2015 Bonnes Mares Grand Cru showed very well, bursting from the glass with a fragrant bouquet of orange peel, dried flowers, whole-cluster spice and sweet red berry fruit. On the palate, the wine is medium to full-bodied, satiny and ample, with a textural attack, melting tannins and juicy acids, concluding with a long, chalky finish. It's a dramatic, stylized Bonnes-Mares that is immediately recognizable as a Vougeraie wine, but it's beautifully realized.

The 2014 Bonnes-Mares Grand Cru, containing 80% whole cluster fruit this year, has a focused, delineated nose, perhaps missing the exuberance that this vineyard can bestow, but it unfurls nicely in the glass revealing touches of woodland and undergrowth (actually quite Musigny-like!). The palate is fresh on the entry with a fine line of acidity, great tension and focus here with a slightly tapered and yet long and tender finish. This is a sophisticated Bonnes Mares that is a little teasing out of barrel, but will grow up into a great, perhaps more 'serious' wine.

Tasted blind at the Burgfest tasting in Beaune, the 2013 Bonnes Mares Grand Cru was missing some complexity on the nose compared to the Bonnes-Mares from Bruno Clair, with sweet red cherries and a touch of kirsch. Yet it needs to show more mineralité and terroir expression. The palate is medium-bodied with ripe red cherries and strawberry and showing quite a lot of structure towards the finish that grips the palate. I would just like more persistence to show through here. Tasted September 2016.