"Since I tasted the first cuvée release from Domaine Olga Raffault from the 2018 vintage, I have been of the opinion that this estate handled the vicissitudes of the blazing summer of 2018 better than virtually anyone in the central Loire. The 2018 les Picasses is the most recent release from this vintage from Domaine Raffault and it is an outstanding young wine. It comes in at a very svelte (particularly for 2018) thirteen percent octane and offers up a pure and classic bouquet of cassis, dark berries, tree bark, a bit of saddle leather, gravelly soil tones, cigar wrapper and a topnote of distant bonfire on the breeze. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and classicallyproportioned, with a fine core of black fruit, excellent soil signature and grip, ripe, chewy tannins and great length on the focused and impeccably balanced finish. This is a proper young release of les Picasses from Domaine Raffault and it is going to need all of a decade in the cellar to start to blossom, but it is going to be a very long-lived and superb bottle of Chinon once it is ready to drink. 2034-2085. 94. 109 "