2015 Petrus

This is an exceptional Petrus vintage, the architecture remains relatively tight, slate and pumice stone scrape, stunning layers of raspberry, grilled black cherries, leather and fennel. Savoury yet fully ripe, a beautiful sense of contrast, and just beginning to open up and show its potential. The bottle tasted in London was perhaps a little under par, holding things back, but I have a tasting from one month ago where it was showing exceptionally well.

The 2015 Petrus is elegant, pure and almost Burgundian on the nose. This has plush, superbly delineated red fruit aromas mixed with blood orange and wilted rose petals. The palate is medium-bodied with a velvety texture that caresses the mouth. There's a little more extraction perhaps. It's more modern in style but this pulls it off. Tasted blind at the 2015 Bordeaux Ten-Year-On tasting.

The 2015 Petrus has a fresh, detailed yet quite understated bouquet of black fruit, pencil box, smoke and light tarry aromas - very succinct and classy. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannin, and linear and quite strict in style, which might explain why I knocked off a point compared to my note in January 2018. But it gently builds in intensity to a grippy, graphite-infused finish with that subtle Japanese seaweed tincture I observed previously. Classic in style, this will benefit from several years in bottle. Excellent. Tasted blind at the Southwold 2015 Bordeaux tasting.