Les Maillons 48 months (2019)

Served blind. No one at the table guessed it - and my blind score came in the highest, which is a fun result given the cult status of this label. White flowers and gunpowder open the nose, then deepen into oxidised apple and linden honey, charged before the first sip. On the palate the intensity holds and lengthens; the finish runs properly long, with pickled mushroom and an almost-lactic funk sitting underneath the fruit - the kind of register extended sur-lie tends to pull through. On the heavier side. Properly tasty - and the blind-score angle says something about how much of the cult lives in the label rather than in the glass.