20% new wood. This is more body builder than dancer but all within the fine-grained Rousseau style. Rich full purple, this has personality. Strikingly rich on the palate while entirely retaining its poise class and Clos de la Roche style.

There are two parcels of Clos de la Roche chez Rousseau, one high and one low, making 1.48ha in total. At 20%, this has a little more oak than it usually does and is more marked by it at this stage in its development. But give it time for the succulent raspberry and red cherry fruit to emerge. The tannins are typically silky, while the acidity brings balance to the floral finish. (TA)

The 2018 Clos de la Roche Grand Cru is an excellent wine in the making, wafting from the glass with a complex bouquet of red berries, orange rind, raw cocoa, rich soil tones and grilled meats that's framed by a discrete application of cedary oak. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, deep and impressively racy, with lively acids, powdery tannins and a long, resonant finish. (William Kelley)

A more elegant if not more complex nose merges pretty aromas of red and dark currant, a plenitude of floral elements along with hints of leather, sandalwood and earth. There is outstanding intensity to the supple mid-palate of the big-bodied flavors that firm up substantially and immediately on the lingering and highly complex finish. The supporting tannins are slightly spiky today but because they seem phenolically mature, I suspect that they will mellow out with time in bottle.

The 2018 Clos de la Roche chez Rousseau is a tad more structured and wilder in personality than the Charmes or Mazy this year, but shows the same outstanding potential. The bouquet delivers a complex and sappy blend of black cherries, red plums, some brambly overtones, bonfire, gamebird, a fine base of soil, vanillin oak and a gentle topnote of mustard seed. On the palate the wine is deep. full-bodied, long and sappy at the core, with very good focus and grip, ripe tannins and a long, polished, but still quite youthful finish. This will need at least a few more years in the cellar to blossom than the Mazy, but in due course, this too will be a superb example. 93+