Another perfect wine is the 1998 Cheval Blanc, which is the usual blend of 55/45 Merlot and Cabernet Franc. Possessing an utterly captivating bouquet of sweet red and black fruits, forest floor, spice and dried flowers, it packs plenty of muscle and depth on the palate, yet is also expansive, elegant and seamless, with no hard edges. Just singing, with everything you could want; complexity, richness, elegance, depth, and length, drink this sensational beauty anytime over the coming two decades. I’m sure it will keep longer, but why in the world would you wait.

The 1998 Cheval Blanc, a blend of 65% Merlot and 35% Cabernet Franc, is deep garnet-brick in color and absolutely explodes with scents of exotic spices, incense, dried roses, cigar box and licorice, with a core of crème de cassis and dried cherries plus touches of black tea and dusty earth. Medium to full-bodied, it fills the mouth with rich, plushly textured fruit and then POW—it hits the mid-palate with an explosion of Chinese five spice and floral perfume sparks, leading to an epically long finish. This cannot fail to impress and can easily cellar for another 30 years or more. (LPB)

While the money-changers in the temple promote Pavie and Angélus to the bureaucratic summits of Saint Émilion in the classification of the commune’s wines, tastings such as this one definitively show that Cheval Blanc no longer has any real rival for quality. The 1998 Cheval Blanc is an utterly brilliant wine, delivering a refined and very complex aromatic constellation of black cherries, sweet dark berries, menthol, gravelly soil tones, cigar smoke and a suave framing of vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is pure, precise and full-bodied, with a velvety palate impression beginning to develop, a sappy core of glorious fruit, marvelous soil signature, fine-grained, seamless tannins and a very, very long, complex and effortless finish. The ’98 Cheval Blanc is certainly a very, very enjoyable glass of wine today, but it is still climbing and I would try to leave it alone for at least a handful more years. Sheer brilliance. 98+