Bellevue-Mondotte 2007

Very little wine is produced (about 400 cases) from this tiny 5-acre vineyard, but it is always among the most concentrated and richest of Bordeaux. The inky/purple-colored 2007 offers sweet cassis fruit notes interwoven with notions of graphite, chalk dust, and toast. Full-bodied with terrific purity and intensity (14.5% alcohol), it should drink well for 20+ years. Drink 2010-2030.

Well, not as over-the-top as the 2006, but the nose is still overdone for me, with black cherries, raspberries coulis, a touch of limestone and blackberry leaf. The palate is very tannic, but I think better balanced and with greater delineation than in previous vintages. Blackberries, minerals, loganberries with a certain minerality towards the finish. Very backward and primal, but certainly I warm to this much more than recent vintages. Tasted April 2008

Good core of ripe fruit, with blackberry and dark chocolate character. Medium body, chewy tannins and a medium finish. Falls a little short

Dark mulberry colour. Quite raw on the nose. Very rich and sweet at first and no dry elements. Well done! Thick and sweet and very modern but well judged. A real hedonist’s wine. For those who like seriously luscious modern wines in which you can stand a spoon up. Drink 2011-2018

Sweet almost confected nose, juicy and sweet, big dose of oak, Parker style? Too sweet perhaps? (AW)

Bright ruby. Musky aromas of black raspberry and licorice. Chewy and supple but a bit unforthcoming, even stunted, today, and not yet showing much definition to its highly concentrated flavors of black fruits, licorice and minerals. Hard to taste now but there's excellent sweetness and solid underlying structure here. This wine always needs time, notes Gerard Perse, who told me that the crop level here in 2007 was just 25 hectoliters per hectare.

There is a mineral character to the red fruits on the nose and the quite light fragrant freshness is very much in evidence at the start of the palate. Some bramble and bilberry show on the mid palate adding some sweetness. 2012-2020.