55% Cabernet Franc, 45% Merlot

Robert Parker: 98+, Neal Martin: 94+, James Suckling: 98

Robert Parker: The 2010 Ausone struck me as another brilliant, potentially perfect wine, which should come as no shock to people who have been following Vauthier's work over the last decade or more. Backward and intense, this wine offers up notes of crushed chalk/rock mineralilty interwoven with blueberry, black raspberry and cassis as well as some graphite and vanillin. It is incredibly rich but at the same time precise, fresh and vivacious. This is a super wine, but it will require enormous patience from its potential suitors. Forget it for a decade and drink it over the following 50+ years. One of the other perfectionist, compulsive producers in St.-Emilion is Alain Vauthier, who is now capably assisted by his daughter.