JCP Maltus, Château Teyssier 2015

JCP Maltus is the personal project of our friend Jonathan Maltus, the British entrepreneur who arrived in Saint-Émilion in the late 1990s and proceeded to do things his own way. Based at Château Teyssier on the limestone plateau, this is a wine that has always operated at the ambitious end of the Maltus portfolio - low yields, meticulous selection, and the kind of concentration that right-bank Merlot delivers when it's pushed hard. The 2015 vintage gave him exceptional raw material: a warm, dry summer that built fruit intensity without sacrificing freshness, and a harvest picked at near-perfect ripeness. "Dark crimson. Rather sweet, dried-fruit aromas. But then there is freshness and this is an appetising whole." 17/20 Jancis Robinson A decade on, this is in a lovely spot. The primary fruit is integrating, the oak has knitted in, and there's a composed, almost meditative quality to it now — dark plum, graphite, a whisper of iron and dried herbs. The tannins are polished but still purposeful.