2017 Grand Puy Lacoste

The 2017 Château Grand-Puy-Lacoste is more open and expressive, with beautiful red and black fruits, dried herbs, savory flowers, and graphite-like notes, as well as a terrific sense of minerality on the palate. It's balanced, medium-bodied, has fine tannins, and a great finish. It's a charming, complex, graceful Pauillac to drink over the coming 15 years.

Tasted blind.  Deep ruby colour. Deep liquorice and black fruit on a cool, brooding nose. This follows on the palate, which shows a prominent cedar note and intense, fresh black-fruit character. The tannins are rich and muscular but well defined. Tightly wound and full of potential, this is graceful and structured with a savoury, long finish. (TP)

A lighter-framed vintage that will be ready to drink before the classic 10 year window. You see hints of this immediately in the plum colour, with shadings of a lighter raspberry around the rim even at four years old. The fruit is savoury blackcurrant and bilberry, with sculpted tannins that make their presence felt. Elegance and finesse show the Cabernet dominance, and the slate and smoke edge give complexity. Needs a few years but I would keep checking in, because there will come a point - as with the 2007s before it - that this will offer succulent drinking pleasure, and for me it is one of the clear standout successes of the 2017 vintage in Pauillac. Harvest September 15 to 29. 75% new oak, technical director Christel Spinner, consultant Eric Boissenot.