Possibly the wine of the vintage, the 2008 Pavie has the elegance of the Pavie Decesse and the power of the Mondotte. It’s a brilliant, sexy beauty loaded with notions of crème de cassis, blackberries, spice box, and licorice, with a classic Saint-Emilion-like liquid rock minerality. This all carries to a full-bodied Saint-Emilion that offers loads of fruit and texture, yet remains fabulous polished, elegant, and balanced. It’s a wine that builds incrementally on the palate, with beautiful depth of fruit and ripe tannins. Bravo to Gerard Perse for another tour de force in Bordeaux! Drink it any time over the coming 30 years or more. The blend of the 2008 is 70% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc, and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon.

This is lavishly oaked, with dark espresso, mocha and bittersweet cocoa notes proudly leading the way, while the core of fig sauce, melted licorice snap and blackberry confiture waits in the wings. Dense and grippy through the finish, with powerfully rendered fruit matching the dense toast. A huge wine that will need some time. Best from 2013 through 2022.

(70% merlot, 20% cabernet franc and 10% cabernet sauvignon; 32 hl/ha; 14.5% alcohol; 65% new oak) Deep ruby-purple. Floral nose offers red cherry, plum, cinnamon and cloves beneath a healthy coating of sexy vanillin oak. Austere but not dry on entry, with plenty of lovely red berry, mint and tobacco flavors displaying amazing purity as well as admirable restraint. Though this is a typically tannic Pavie, the tannins are very smooth and the wine seems by far the best balanced of those in the Perse stable (especially compared to Pavie-Decesse, which showed aggressive tannins that overpowered that wine's fruit). A more elegant, less massive and ultimately more enjoyable version of Pavie than some past vintages. For my money, this will be of the better Pavies of recent memory, a wine of real grace and refinement but with a broodingly masculine personality that lurks just beneath the surface.

This is starting to be perfect to drink now with chocolate, grilled-meat, plum and wet-earth character. Full-bodied, tight and focused. The acidity has diminished and this shows balance. Drink or hold.

A slightly more compact style of Pavie in this vintage, but still full-bodied, the 2008 has a youthful, dense purple color and is seriously endowed with concentrated, rich fruit, licorice, graphite, forest floor, and loads of dark plum and black and red currant fruit. This wine still has some tannins to resolve, and should be cellared for another 4-5 years. Drink over the following two decades.