91 David Schildknecht - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

"Bizeul's 2004 Cotes du Roussillon Villages Vieilles Vignes - combining Carignan, Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre, and the obscure, indigenous Lladoner Pelot, and like his 'Sorcieres' issuing from diverse terroirs of Vingrau and Tautavel - smells of black cherry preserves, creme de cassis, Szechuan pepper and resin. While this formidably-concentrated wine displays an almost sticky confectionary persistence and is strongly marked by the wood in which it is fermented and aged, it also tastes reminiscent of chalk dust, lead pencil or wet stone - in short, of what for lack of a better collective term one must call 'minerals'. Mint, fennel, pepper, and bitter-sweet black fruits - along with the aforementioned oak and mineral-like residues - inform a palate-staining finish."