The 2010 Romanee St. Vivant is dazzling. An exotic mosaic of sweet spices, red berries, dried flowers and mint bursts onto the palate in this viscerally thrilling, captivating Romanee St. Vivant. The 2010 is notable for so many attributes, but one that stands out is the sheer beauty and texture of the breathtaking finish.

All that I could think when I first put my nose in the glass was 'wow!' as the airy and very cool nose of ultra-elegant spice, floral and herbal nuances greeted me. Add to this plenty of attractive nuances to the kaleidoscopically layered red currant and plum suffused aromas and you have something pretty special. This is, not surprisingly, much more refined than the Grands Ech as the supporting tannins on the silky middle weight flavours are extremely fine-grained yet notably dense as the explosive finish is quite firm. Despite the tightly wound structure the overall impression of the mouth feel is one of delicacy and ultimate refinement. This should be a particularly excellent vintage for what has become one of the stars of this gorgeously deep portfolio of wines.

Good bright, deep red. Highly nuanced aromas of strawberry, flowers, cocoa powder, mocha, smoke and earth. Sweet and seamless yet taut too, already displaying great personality to the flavours of red and darker fruits, salt, pepper and earth. Wonderfully soil-driven wine with a very sweet, very long finish featuring noble, fine-grained tannins and terrific sappy verve. Showing great charm today but it's hard to imagine that this wine won't shut down in the bottle. For his part, Aubert de Villaine describes vintage 2009 as 'seduction' and 2010 as 'the opposite of seduction.' But today the high quality of these 2010s is plain to see, even if the top four bottlings here really call for 10 to 152 years of cellaring. (ST)

NB vintage. Dense, rich and seductive on nose. Firm and briary on the finish. Very grown-up and long term with a skein of tannin. Lots of lovely juice in the middle. Energetic finish and massive vivacity. But this really does need time. Will it get it? 19/20 points (JR)