Peter Michael Les Pavots 2016

JS99: Blackberries, blueberries, raspberry kir, sweet tobacco and black truffle. Full bodied with chewy tannins and superb texture and length. Extremely poised and powerful. Finishes with so much fresh leather and blueberries. Goes on for minutes. Try after 2023.

JD98+: A solid step up, the 2016 Les Pavots comes from vines planted in 1989 and is a mix of two separate sites in Knights Valley. This straight-up phenomenal Cabernet offers a powerful nose of ripe black fruits, tobacco leaf, chocolate, and spring flowers, and it has a Margaux-like complexity and elegance. Full-bodied on the palate, it has a multi-dimensional, seamless texture, building tannins, and a great, great finish. It’s a baby of a wine that needs 4-5 years of bottle age, but it will probably merit a triple-digit score in 7-8 years and keep for three decades.