Reminding me of the 2010, the 2020 Château Valandraud is stunning, full-bodied, dense, and concentrated, and a perfect wine in every way. Cassis, currants, graphite, and smoky tobacco all emerge from this deep purple-hued beauty, and it's full-bodied on the palate, with awesome purity, depth, and a layered mouthfeel, ripe, building tannins, integrated acidity, and a great finish. It's still a baby yet offers so much pleasure today. Hide bottles for another 4-5 years, count yourself lucky, and it will cruise over the following 50 years or more. Drink 2030-2076.

The 2020 Valandraud has a deep purple hue and delivers an intense bouquet of lush blackberry, raspberry, cassis and crushed violet aromas, all beautifully defined. The palate is very well balanced with a sensual opening. This’ll have you smitten from the first sip: silky-smooth with immense depth and harmony. There is tension and precision from start to finish. This 2020 continues a startling run of form by Jean-Luc Thunevin, this representing one of his crowning achievements to date. Chapeau!

If the 2019 vintage at this address was something of a guilty pleasure, the 2020 Valandraud is simply guilty as charged. Exhibiting aromas of jammy black fruits mingled with toasted coconut, spices and caricatural slatherings of new oak, it's full-bodied, rich and chewy, with generously extracted tannins that clamp down on the finish. All that oak and extract impedes access to the wine's generous fruit, rendering it less demonstrative and gourmand than its 2019 counterpart, and that's a pity, as recent vintages of Valandraud have been among the more successful of the few remaining hold-out "garagiste" wines of the Right Bank.