Description:

98 points Wine Enthusiast

 Lightly baked and hinting at raisin and fine herbs, the bouquet on this benchmark Spanish red enfolds aromas of tobacco, moss and ripe tomato. In the mouth, it's elegant and silky but also full and expansive. Flavors of baked berry fruits, baking spices, herbs and cocoa finish with a light coating of toast. This is an amazingly complete, exemplary wine that's just entering its prime. *Editors' Choice* (MS) 

97 points Decanter

 Recommended by Jasper Morris MW for a tasting we held together, this just jumped out of the glass. I am giving a drinking date from now, as it is getting on towards 17 years old, but it is still extremely young and has decades ahead of it, with bright black cherry and brambled autumnal fruits in the foreground, with tertiary leather and cigar just beginning to spiral upwards. Voluptuous, powerful, layered, complex, with all the subtle toast, tar, chocolate shavings and smoke hints that you would expect from a wine with such a slow and subtle ageing process (in this case 15 months in 20,000-litre vats, 25 month in new barrels, 17 months in older barrels and a further 26 months in large-sized oak vats). I love it when a legendary wine lives up to the hype, and this more than did so. (JA)