Château Tertre Roteboeuf 2010

Deep garnet in color, the 2010 Le Tertre Roteboeuf reveals notes of leather, cedar and balsamic with a core of raisin cake and unsmoked cigars. Full-bodied, the palate is firm and chewy with a lively line cutting through the dried berries and savory layers, finishing just a little warm.

Smoke, licorice, vanilla bean, toast, ripe and overripe plum notes create the perfume. This is incredibly dense, sensuous and glycerin-filled; the wine slips and slides all over your palate. With massive concentration and intensity of flavor, the wine is sexy, showy and flamboyant. There is no sensation of heat in the 16% finish. This is a wine for tasters seeking a night of hedonistic pleasure.

While I don't think the 2010 Château Tertre Roteboeuf matches the 2005 (or 2016), it's a brilliant Saint-Emilion that offers textbook Tertre notes of cassis, spicy wood, graphite, white truffle, sappy tobacco, and earth. Taking lots of air to open up and integrate its ample tannins, this beauty is full-bodied, has a seamless, layered texture, flawless balance, and a rock star of a finish. It's beautifully done and just now at the early stages of its prime drink window. It needs at least 2-3 hours in a decanter at this stage (and was even better on the second day). It's going to evolve for another 20-30 years in cold cellars.

Deep purple. Very intense fruit bouquet, at once fresh and jammy, with hints of fresh raspberry jam, Red Currant, fruit-tea notes, dried cherry pits, Damson plums. On the palate, a charming giant with an almost dramatic fruit concentration, with traces of plum schnapps in a sweet-tinged finish. Perhaps the most alcoholic Tertre- Rôteboeuf in history, this wonder sits at 15.5% ABV. Here, wine merchants turn into drug dealers.

Deep purple, dense core, garnet shimmer at the rim. Very intense fruit bouquet, both fresh and with jammy tones, hints of fresh raspberry jam, redcurrant, fruity tea notes, dried cherry pits, damson plums. On the palate, a charmer of a giant, with almost dramatic fruit concentration, traces of plum schnapps in the seemingly sweet finish. Perhaps the most alcohol-rich Tertre-Rôteboeuf in its history. This wonder sits at 15.5% ABV. So here, wine merchants mutate into oenological drug dealers. (19/20). Tasted just before bottling at the estate with Nina Mitjaville. Insane. Plenty of tea aromas, burnt sugarcane, vanilla seeds and prunes. On the palate, rather thick, and somehow it still finds balance. Almost too much of everything, and despite all this monstrous character, it is real wine. Brilliant wine. A glance from Saint Emilion into outer space!

Sweet, creamy, opulent and powerful bouquet, hazelnut cream, chocolate cream, dried fruits, prunes, vanilla, mint. Velvety, lavish, dense and powerful palate with a creamy texture, intense sweet aromatics, fine tannins, delicate acidity, and a very long, opulent finish with excellent after-aromas. 19/20 2016 - 2035

Tasted the following day from the rest of this vertical, because I couldn’t resist adding another wine, and I had kept this one in my own cellar for the past decade. It was too young to open, to be honest, but it was just stunning, and it kept getting better over the two days after opening. Opulent and luscious, with balsamic, dark chocolate and clove, damson, kirsch and black cherry fruit, and the precision and swirl of campfire, ash and incense that mark out François Mitjavile’s approach. 100% new oak. An exceptional vintage with many great wines, and yet this stands out.

François Mitjaville has crafted a Tertre of great volume and extraordinary energy, while artistically combining it with an unforgettable tenderness of texture and fineness of bouquet. In this “plus vintage,” as he puts it (“more concentration, more acidity, more tannins”), he also manages to add more balance.