Prieuré Lichine 2006

With the highly respected Right Bank consultant Stephane Derenoncourt providing advice, Prieure-Lichine has moved to a complete, savory, and for lack of a better description, broad, lush, sexy style. This has always been a wine that was drinkable at an early age, but I think they are building more texture and flesh into the wine, as well as more concentration, without losing the estate's early appeal. The 2006 is an outstanding wine, with complex notes of spring flowers, forest floor, sweet black currants, and earth. Medium to full-bodied, flavorful, without a trace of astringency or hardness, this is a succulent, fleshy wine to drink over the next 15 or more years.

Tasted blind at Farr Vintners' horizontal, the 2006 Prieuré-Lichine is one of the hidden delights of the vintage. It has a slightly musky blackberry and raspberry-scented bouquet, cigar box and smoke developing with time. Broody...but this is well defined. The palate is medium-bodied and introspective, yet balanced with good acidity. It just lacks some weight and presence on the finish that feels conservative and yet it is fresh and lively, and actually improves in the glass.

Silky, with mineral and currant character, medium body and a fresh finish. Long and caressing. Well done.

Briary and full and sleek and with a great mouthful of fresh fruit which completely disguises the fine tannins until the very, very end. Bravo! Real complete wine that expresses the vintage and commune. Graceful. Very clean. Whisks over the palate - and actually you could probably drink this over a very long period and enjoy it.

Deep red-ruby. Pungently mineral aromas of blackberry, violet and sexy nutty oak. Rich, dense and chocolatey, but with harmonious acids giving an enticing juicy quality to this flavorful wine. Notes of underbrush and tobacco leaf contribute complexity. Finishes with rather suave tannins that became a bit firmer with aeration, suggesting that this should be held for a few years.