Pavie Macquin 2010 (750ML)

97 JA / 97 VM / 97 WS / 95+ RP / 95 JS

Love the nuances straight off the bat with this wine, it's a nose that you want to take your time with, slowing everything down. Blackberry and cassis fruits, tannnins brooding but velvety, holds its core strength with confidence. This is 12 years old but just revving up out of the starting block. Delicious, reserved but luscious black chocolate and liqourice bud, nothing too sweet, this is balanced and careful in its slate-filled pummice stone minerality. Has a deft lightness of touch that conceals its power. 80% new oak. Part of the warm vintages series within this vertical. - Jane Anson

A towering, statuesque wine, the 2010 Pavie-Macquin is distinguished by its vertical explosiveness and soaring intensity. Red cherry jam, plums and dried flowers are some of the many aromas and flavors that open up as the 2010 gains breadth over time. Naturally, the 2010 is still a very young wine, but it is incredibly impressive just the same, not to mention one of the highlights of the morning. - Antonio Galloni, Vinous Media

This takes the fruit of 2009 but harnesses it even more quickly, with rivets of graphite and apple wood studding the core of plum sauce, blackberry reduction and raspberry pâte de fruit. Ample singed apple wood lines the finish, melded wonderfully with the fruit, while the minerality lingers on and on in the background, waiting in reserve. Around it all, a beguiling violet note dances. The combination of power and purity is a wonderful thing.—Non-blind Pavie Macquin vertical (December 2014). Best from 2020 through 2035. 3,750 cases made. - James Molesworth, Wine Spectator

This is always an extremely masculine, dense, burly wine, and the 2010, which tips the scales at 14.5% alcohol (just slightly under that of the 2009), has a final blend of 80% Merlot and the rest virtually all Cabernet Franc, with just 1% Cabernet Sauvignon. Loads of crushed rock and chalkiness, along with licorice, black truffle, smoked game and black fruits dominate the aromatics and flavor. Backward, formidably endowed, full-bodied and almost atypically massive and huge, with gargantuan extraction, this is a wine for patient connoisseurs to forget about for close to a decade. Anticipated maturity: 2022-2040+. - Robert Parker

Gorgeous nose with great complexity. Blackberry, licorice and a steely mineral note. Lots of chalk, nutmeg and violets too. Dense and full-bodied on the palate with a beautiful fruit and a sumptuous fruity finish that just goes on and on. Velvety tannins and layered texture with lots of raw licorice. Drink from 2018. - James Suckling