91 Points | International Wine Cellar , March/April 2013

(includes 5% cabernet sauvignon):  Full, saturated red-ruby.  Very pure, soil-inflected aromas and flavors of blackberry liqueur, mocha, truffle and smoky minerality, complicated by hints of milk chocolate and crushed herbs.  Juicy and spicy but a bit youthfully imploded, with enticing sweetness leavened by brisk acidity.  Most impressive today on the long, energetic, firmly tannic finish, which leaves behind notes of blackberry, black cherry, espresso and dark chocolate.  Give this at least two or three years in the cellar before pulling the cork.  Susana Balbo is now toasting her barrels with convection, which she says gives sweetness to the wines without an overbearing oakiness.  (A second bottle, of equal quality, was more plush and pliant in the mid-palate, but equally long and gripping.