I got a few bottles of this wine from the Langton’s Wine Exchange in 2004 for $35 per bottle. Seemed like a good price at the time. I remember trying it when it arrived and it was a real bruiser of a wine: big fruit and big alcohol; it certainly wasn’t a wine to be challenged in single-hand combat. Well six years later some of the fruit has subsided, but the alcohol is still there, and lots of other aromas have evolved. Red fruits and dried herbs, but also a stinkiness, with cheese, farmyard aromas and an underlying tinnyness. The palate showed sweet fruits like mulberries, black cherries and black currants, with leather, minerals and earth, but there is also some varnish, tin and something like rotting compost. Good length, but that is probably a negative, because the sooner the taste is forgotten the better. Neither nose nor palate cleaned up with time. Barely drinkable with obvious faults, but there might be “good” bottles out there somewhere. Approach with caution. 15% abv. $35. Cork. 74 Points.