(2021) What a truly lovely wine this is, perfumed and beautifully elegant, yet with real substance. It opens with such gorgeous aromatics, cranberry and cherry red fruits, but a pot-pourri spice melting into rose-hip and hints of briar. I tasted this wine from barrel and thought it showed huge perfume and promise back in January 2020, but now it is fully realised, the palate so perfectly poised between juicy and elegant fruit and hints of smokiness and forest floor, sweet tannins and finely-etched acidity balancing everything perfectly. Aged for a year in French oak, 30% new, this is a tour-de-force from Riverby.