Cru Bourgeois, Medoc.
From a half bottle, consumed from a cheap plastic wine glass.
Very dark purple in the glass.
A wonderful nose, spicy, chocolate and rich, plummy fruit.
Smooth and lush in the mouth, berry and black cherry fruit, black olives, slightly burned, cedar, with some heat toward the end.
And then, in a flash, it kind of fell apart, turning thin, sherry-like, heavy roasted-burned notes and a very odd vanilla taste.
Perhaps a bad bottle, perhaps it was just going through a difficult phase. Perhaps it might have 'righted itself' in time, if I had bought a regular 750 ml bottle.
Who knows. The first half was great.