(2022) A Right Bank Bordeaux, two-thirds merlot with Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec, aged 12 months in oak barrels, 20% new. Dark fruits and quite a meaty character, plum and leather dominate. The palate is firm with some chewy tannin, chalky and dry, but the fruit does have sweetness on the mid-palate. A little tobacco and dustiness in the well-balanced finish. Good value.

(2022) An inexpensive Bordeaux, not aged in barrel but spending 11 months in contact with wooden staves in tank, it is a blend of 60% merlot, 24% cabernet sauvignon and 16% petit verdot. With six years under its belt it has a touch of ruby warmth to the colour and a nose of red and black berry fruits. The palate is medium-bodied and the fruit quite savoury, acid a little prominent for me, though the oak treatment has softened the edges.

(2021) Unoaked, the blend is 65% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon and 15% Cabernet Franc. Robust, dark ruby in colour, it's a big, plummy, creamy Merlot nose, the two Cabernets adding just a hint of green olive austerity somewhere in the background, but nothing much interrupts that Merlot fruit. The palate has plenty of fruit too, tannins dry but quite fine and plenty of cherry-skin and plum-skin tart acidity to balance. Enjoyable, quite big-scaled, everyday Bordeaux.

(2019) You know, for its price, this really is a particularly good Bordeaux, 60% Merlot and 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, from chalky and clay soils. Bold purple in colour, there's a refined graphite note on the nose, just a hint of cedar, and plenty of ripe fleshy red and black fruits. In the mouth the pleasure continues, a lovely dark stripe of bittersweet liquorice underpinning plum and pulpy red berries, spices, acid and tannin all harmonious in the finish. It feels as if it will cellar for a few years too. A little star at under £10.

(2011) 13%. Lifted, kirsch-like aromas of cherry and red plum suggest an unoaked, ripe style of Merlot, with a touch of lipsticky carbonic maceration perhaps. The palate has really juicy and keen black fruit: this is flooded with those sweet and plump black fruit flavours, with modest tannins and acids giving a bit of structure in a very gluggable, lamb-friendly wine.