Chateau Bellevue Mondotte 2010

JAMES SUCKLING: "This is incredibly intense and powerful with aromas of iron, spice and berry. Full body with a dense center palate of dark fruits and chocolate. Very long and refined. Balanced. Very closed. Try in 2018."

WINE CELLAR INSIDER: "Coffee, licorice, smoke, oak, wet earth and blackberry liqueur scents flood your glass. Deep in color, the wine is powerful, rich and clearly expresses its limestone terroirs. There is a polish to the tannins, and an elegance to the powerful, ripe black fruits. But make no mistake, this is a wine to lay down. It is not going to be fun to taste for at least a decade or more."

WINEADVOCATE: "The wine is not as powerful as one might expect, given the owners and winemaking team, coming in at 14.3%. A sensational, rather massive example for a 2010, this opaque purple wine offers up notes of subtle barbecue smoke, blackberry and cassis as well as a hints of lead pencil shavings and a confiture of red and black fruits in the mouth. Full-bodied, unctuously textured and excruciatingly tannic, this is a big, blockbuster style of wine meant for 10-50+ years of cellaring. This miniature 5-acre vineyard, beautifully situated in St.-Emilion, has produced a blend of 90% Merlot and the rest Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. Yields were 24 hectoliters per hectare." - Robert M. Parker, Jr.

FALSTAFF: "Tiefdunkles Rubingranat, fester Farbkern, violette Reflexe, zarter Wasserrand. Feines Brombeerkonfit, zarter Schokoladetouch, reife Zwetschken. Saftig, sehr gute Komplexität, schwarze Kirschen, feine Tannine, elegant und anhaltend, dunkles Beerenkonfit auch im Finale, gutes Entwicklungspotenzial."

ANTONIO GALLONI: "Saturated dark ruby. High-toned aromas of black raspberry, blueberry and smoky oak. Superripe, lush, chewy and deep, with a distinctly high-toned quality to the fine-grained flavors of wild dark berries, espresso, graphite and dark chocolate. For all its sweetness, there´s no shortage of acidity here. The broad, sweet, building tannins give shape to the fruit of this massive wine, which remained impressively fresh in the recorked bottle."

WINESPECTATOR: "This sports the ample, fleshy, powerful core of the vintage, with dark blue and black fruits, but has extra drive, with mouthwatering acidity and lots of minerality cutting through on the finish. Shows great mouthfeel and purity. Score range: 93-96"