CHÂTEAU PAVIE MACQUIN

Well-controlled damson notes are joined by an elegant balance of oak and fruit. This is austere and tightly buttoned up, taking its time to show itself. There's a burst of liquorice root and some salinity, and the limestone touch is clear, but it doesn't quite build over the palate as you might expect it to, suggesting that the fruit was just a fraction under ideal ripeness. Still, this is accomplished winemaking that almost rises above the constraints of the year. Drinking range: 2025 - 2038 Rating: 92 Jane Anson, Decanter (Apr 2018)

Deliciously engaging, with a pure, aromatic display of boysenberry and blackberry fruit running through, picking up light bramble and anise accents along the way. Fresh and nicely defined, showing plenty of crackle on the finish. Rating: 92-95 James Molesworth, The Wine Spectator (Apr 2018)

Very solid center palate of fruit and firm, silky tannins. Linear and bright with a focused and pretty finish. Full-bodied, tight and precise. Very clear and bright. Rating: 94-95 James Suckling, www.jamessuckling.com (Apr 2018)

There was a little frost damage here, taking out 10% of the crop. Nevertheless the yield here was 34 hl/ha, an admirable figure, from 13.5 hectares of vines currently in production. This is 80% Merlot, picked on September 20th, then from the 26th to the 29th and finishing on October 3rd, as well as 18% Cabernet Franc picked on September 28th and 29th, then on October 3rd and 9th, and 2% Cabernet Sauvignon, picked October 9th. This has a very perfumed character on the nose, fragrant black cherry, cherry blossom, dark with sooty notes, very focused and composed, the fruit wrapped in fragrant vanilla and toasted praline oak. The palate carries this confidence with ease, showing a very fine and elegant composition of dark mulberry, plum and sooty cherry flavours, underpinned by a dense finely grained bed of velvety tannins, with grilled pip complexity and little notes of toasted nut and coffee bean. A long, fresh, tannin-infused finish, with a pile of grip. Such confidence and yet also such harmony here, wrapped up in the typical Thienpont textural richness. As seems commonplace here these days, an imposing result which seems concentrated but which avoids any hint of over-done character. Rating: 94-96 Chris Kissack, www.thewinedoctor.com (Apr 2018)