With an almost Pauillac-like stature and structure, the 2018 Château Saint-Pierre (Saint-Julien) (77% Cabernet Sauvignon and 23% Merlot) offers a powerful bouquet of black currants, lead pencil, spicy oak, and chocolate and shows more earth and tobacco as it sits in the glass. Deeply hued, full-bodied, and concentrated, it has a stacked mid-palate, building tannins, and one heck of a great finish. It needs to be forgotten for 7-8 years and will keep for 2-3 decades.

A powerful, virile wine, the 2018 Saint-Pierre is also one of the highlights of the vintage. Black cherry, graphite, smoke, leather, menthol, violet and spice meld together in a brooding, tannic Saint-Julien that is going to need a bit of time to truly come into its own. Saint-Pierre is muscular, massively tannic and forbidding, and yet there is a ton of fruit behind all of that structure. Cabernet Sauvignon features heavily in the blend, and that comes through in the wine's flavor profile and overall feel. Readers will have to be patient. I can't wait to taste it from bottle. The 2018 is 77% Cabernet Sauvignon and 23% Merlot. Tasted four times.

Composed of 77% Cabernet Sauvignon and 23% Merlot, the 2018 Saint-Pierre bursts from the glass with a glorious perfume of kirsch, blackcurrant pastilles, black raspberries and cedar chest with hints of red roses, pencil shavings and spice box. The medium to full-bodied palate coats the mouth with velvety tannins and beautifully knit freshness, supporting the generous black and red berry layers, finishing long and perfumed. It needs a good four years for the oak to marry and the fruit to really hit its stride, then should drink a further 20+ years.