I drank this over three days. The first day it was tightly wound, showing structure and precision, with a liberal dusting of minerals in the finish, but very little flavor. The second day it had loosened up slightly, still with pleasingly prickly acid and minerality, and now some citrusy grapefruit peel flavor. Today it continued to show fine structure as well, finally, as some real fruit, kind of a flinty lemon. Very good, interesting wine with character and intensity. My only complaint is that, while the finish is not short, the flavors do not linger in the mouth long after drinking.
I don’t know how this wine compares with the now legendary 2002 gras mouton, but it beats by a considerable distance a 2004 I drank about a month ago, which featured more initial funk, less intensity and precision, and less staying power – by day three it had lost its spine and was only innocuously pleasant. I think the '05 has just been released in the US in the last couple of weeks.