95+ Points | International Wine Cellar , March/April 2013

(around 14% alcohol):  Pale greenish-yellow.  Musky, iodiney aromas of pineapple, resin, honey and spicy oak.  An intensely mineral wine with almost painful cut to its tactile flavors of menthol, honey, spice oils and peppermint.  This extremely dense wine conveys a strong impression of dry extract but is more about saline minerality and soil tones than primary fruits.  Finishes with intriguing mentholated lift.  This brilliant rendition of terroir will need a good 10 to 15 years of bottling aging.  De Villaine believes this wine is not as rich as usual but is very fresh.  I find it plenty dense but a bit youthfully disjointed, less honeyed than in some recent vintages but with great class and longer-term potential.