This is up there with the best wines that I have tasted in the vintage. Beautifully balanced, classically refined but profound, delivering nuanced waves of cassis, blackberry puree, peony, pomegrante, mandarin peel, graphite, smoked sandalwood, incense. There is exceptional softness yet density to the tannins, such a confident structure overall and the build up on the tannins through the palate is so slow and careful that it is only at the end of play that you become aware of just how big a vintage it is. Clear ageing potential, easy to love, very easy to recommend. 12% press wine. Vincent Decup technical director. 40% of production in the 1st wine.

The 2020 Montrose was bottled in July 2022. The alcohol is 13.4%, a whole degree less than the previous year but with the same concentration (IPT is 80). It has a fabulous bouquet that delivers on all that promise from when I finally tasted the wine around a year earlier from barrel, a cornucopia of blackberry, bilberry, crushed stone, Indian ink and loamy/undergrowth scents. Very mercurial in the glass, it seems to shapeshift with every minute. The palate is medium-bodied with such a precise entry. This is far more detailed than either the 2019 or 2018, a symmetrical Montrose with unerring detail and mineralité, its silky texture belying the power underneath. This is unequivocally a brilliant wine and a benchmark in recent years. Contender for wine of the vintage. (NM)

A serious wall of blueberry and blackberry compote, and a ton of savoury Cabernet sinew and freshness. This is a great Montrose, inky, broad-shouldered and structured. It needs time to aerate and open in the glass, then you see the precision, the heft, the chiselling of the fruits with a ton of graphite, cigar box and campfire smoke - huge persistency. This will need a long time and will reward patience. One of the few where a 1986, 2016 and 2010 comparison makes sense. (JA)