Heavy, staining garnet out to wide bricking edges.  Considerable sed.  Tiny tired funk breathes out quickly into match-head, pine pitch and gum-arabic.  Citrus peel and nutmeg.  Incredible dust floral over flinty mineral.  Iron oxide.  Violet and wilted roses surrounded by gigantic black cherry preserves.  In the mouth, caramel and shockingly intense fruit of a perfectly ripe origin.  Viscous but perfectly acidic, it is a wine you CHEW, not taste.  Everything promised in the bouquet translates perfectly on the tongue.  Impressively few signs of a decade of age.  Vibrant and lively and simultaneously so unbelievably ripe and succulent.  This is not ‘absolute nectar’.  Well, it is for me, but this is the style of wines I like.  The middle explodes into cedar and dark chocolate, sweet and rich and rides long into the finish only finally succumbing to intense, drying tannin at the absolute last moment.  This wine approaches perfect.  And it’s not going anywhere.  There is easily another 10 years on the fruit.  14-5   ♦♦♦