Lafleur 1995

This is an awesome Lafleur, but it is also an amazingly backward, tannic monster that will need more cellaring than any Medoc in this vintage. The wine boasts an opaque black/purple color, as well as a closed but promising nose that represents the essence of blackberry, raspberry, and cherry fruit. Intertwined with those aromas is the tell-tale mineral terroir of Lafleur, full body, blistering dry, astringent tannin, and a layered, weighty feel on the palate. This is the kind of young claret that I couldn't wait to rush out and buy two decades ago, but now I have to be content to admire it and wish I were twenty years younger. It is formidable, prodigious, and oh, so promising, but I cannot see it being ready to drink before the end of the second decade of the next century