94 Robert Parker - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

"Sociando-Mallet is the poster child for what cru bourgeois estates can achieve. This is a wine that is consistently of classified-growth quality and also one of the longest lived wines made in the Medoc. An exceptional vintage for Sociando-Mallet, 2003 has produced a spectacularly concentrated, inky blue/purple-colored wine with an extraordinary nose of blackberries, raspberries, some white flowers, and a hint of lead pencil shavings. The wine is powerful, extremely full-bodied, quite tannic, and seriously endowed. This is stunning wine that is rich, layered, and in need of 5-6 years of bottle-age. It should keep for 30+ years. It is certainly a riveting effort for the vintage and, as I wrote last year, probably a modern-day version of a hypothetical blend of a 1970 and a 1982."