Dense imperial purple, with a nose that takes coaxing but is remarkably complex. Some quality oak behind this summer pudding of a wine. It is going to be a Rubens beauty in due course. Bonnes Mares seems to fall into two camps: those that got hit by the heat and drought and those that blossomed. This is in the latter category. Tasted: November 2019.

The 2018 Bonnes-Mares Grand Cru is blessed with one of my favorite aromatics from Dujac this year, featuring black cherries, raspberry, crushed stone and pressed iris flower, all quite restrained for a Bonnes-Mares but showing outstanding focus. The palate is medium-bodied with chalky tannins, a fine line of acidity and a strict and quite linear finish that lingers long in the mouth. Outstanding. (NM)

After the slight dip of premier cru, we ramped right back up to the magic of Domaine Dujac grand crus with this stellar example of Bonnes-Mares. The bouquet is deep and flat out stunning out of the blocks, soaring from the glass in an already very complex combination of red and black cherries, plums, gamebird, a great base of chalky soil tones, woodsmoke, raw cocoa, vanillin oak and a topnote of rose petals. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and very pure on the attack, with a great core, superb soil signature, ripe, firm, but buried tannins and a very long, tangy and promising finish. This is extremely refined already for young Bonnes-Mares and is another stellar example of the vintage from the Seysses family. (Drink between 2035-2085)

Unfurling in the glass with a youthfully reserved bouquet of cassis, wild berries, rose petals, peonies and sweet soil tones, Dujac's 2018 Bonnes-Mares Grand Cruis is full-bodied, lively and incisive, with a muscular and tight-knit core, racy acids and a long, chalky finish. As usual, this is one of the tightest-knit, most overtly mineral reds in the cellar, and it will demand patience. (William Kelley)