As with the previous year’s bottling, this wine is shut down with tannins and toasty oak. Dark and polished, with flavors of black fruits, coffee and spice trying to emerge, the wine’s nose gives it away as an ager, offering damp earth, later transforming to coffee, spice and rich, dark fruit. Throw a case in your cellar until 2008, then try a bottle a year after that. ——M.D.(12/15/2006)—— 91

Right now this vibrant, dark purple wine is closed up and dominated by toasty new oak—vanilla and cedar notes take the lead. But the wine appears to have the structure to support this ambitious oak treatment, the fruit just needs some time to re-emerge. Try in 2008.——J.C.(9/2/2004)—— 88