Producer note: Resident enologist François Millet described the 2013 vintage as one that had a "very difficult spring with an equally poor flowering that produced a lot of shatter and a high incidence of shot berries. Somewhat curiously we had a very solid July and August, which in the last few vintages has been rare, but despite the clement conditions the maturities didn't really progress much. By contrast September was pretty much lousy and in particular the second half of it. The wet and humid conditions were perfect to allow rot to spread and to spread fast and we were really worried that we could have a serious problem. We chose to begin picking on the 5th of October and picked slowly until the 13th. While the general level of quality was quite high we did have to do significant sorting and I would put our sorting losses at around 10%. Between these losses and the poor flowering we wound up with a bit less overall yield than we obtained in 2012. With respect to the vinifications the fruit had a very high solid to liquid ratio so we had to be careful not to over exact the structural elements because it would have been easy to do. As to the wines, I love them because the terroir almost couldn't be any clearer. They are refreshing, intense and balanced and I think they're going to surprise a lot of people in the sense that such a difficult vintage could produce such beautiful wines. Moreover I believe that they will continue to put on weight as they age because the musts were actually denser than the wines seem to be now so all of that dry extract has to show up sooner or later." The 2012s, revisited below, are simply terrific and were bottled between February and March 2014 and have turned out even slightly better than I originally foresaw Tasting note: A brooding but gorgeously spicy nose is comprised of liqueur-like dark berry fruit scents that also display plenty of floral influence that includes notes of lavender, violet and, somewhat curiously, honeysuckle. There is outstanding concentration and punch to the seductively textured and marvelously intense big-bodied flavors that are borderline robust as the supporting tannins are dense but refined. I really like the Zen-like sense of harmony to the explosively long and pungent mineral-driven finish that really stains the palate. This is flat out remarkable.

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