100 Yves Beck - YvesBeck.wine

Medium purple with violet highlights. Do you know how to recognize a great wine? By its ability to not try to impress from the start… but to adopt a subtle approach, without banging its fist on the table or speaking loudly. This is exactly what Canon's bouquet manages to do. It's not there to put on a show, but simply to demonstrate that it is among the greatest achievements of 2016. What complexity, what subtlety, and what precision! The initial taste is compact, refined, and powerful, yet delicate…! This logic continues on the palate where all the elements perfectly fulfill their roles. The acidic structure provides class, juiciness, and freshness, the sweetness softens the edges, while the tannins display power and depth majestically. Respect to the entire Canon team. 2024-2056 100/100

99 Lisa Perrotti-Brown - The Wine Palate

The 2016 Canon is deep garnet colored. It pirouettes out of the glass with energetic scents of Morello cherries, black raspberries, and fresh blueberries, plus wafts of lilacs, star anise, fallen leaves, and fragrant soil. Medium to full-bodied, the palate is exquisitely balanced with beautifully ripe, fine-grained tannins and seamless freshness supporting the perfumed, multi-layered fruits, leading to a very long and minerally finish on this beautiful wine.

98 James Suckling - Jamessuckling.com

Aromas of dried raspberries, dried flowers, cedar, tobacco, earth and some primary fruit. The palate has wonderful definition and a medium body. It’s chalky, with precise red fruit that is slowly receding, showing a bit of earth. The polished, focused tannins complement the vibrant fruit. Drink or hold. 10 Years On retrospective.

98 Jane Anson - Inside Bordeaux

The best for me since the 2010, just the perfect balance of ripeness, power, precision and finesse. This is more powerful on paper than the 2015 in terms of quantity of tannins but you feel them less because there are so many layers of flavour. Maple syrup, cocoa bean, cassis, black cherries, blueberries, violet and sage, with a saline kick on the finish. A wonderful example of what limestone can deliver. The texture is not silk, instead it has grip and grain, it holds you back and demands you stay around. Harvest September 22 to October 11. 45hl/hyield, 3.57ph, 65% new oak, harvest Setember 22 to October 11.

98 Decanter

This vintage delivers a beautiful, classic style of Canon that is right at the top of what St-Émilion can offer. Compact and dense without being hard, it is finely structured both in terms of the texture of the cassis and blackberry fruits and in the shape of the tannins. It demonstrates a clear minerality and a feather-brushing of violet notes. This is less obviously sexy than 2015, but is a wine that offers a masterclass in what limestone terroir can convey - salinity, succulence, hints of austerity and reserves of power. I retasted it a few times, and the main take away of what to expect is layers of flavour and huge persistency. The details of how they worked the vintage are an added bonus to understanding how they achieved this result. When it started getting hot and dry, they left all green cover on the vines, and did no green harvesting except tidying up in September. The result was loading the vines to avoid over-concentration. 72% Merlot and 28% Cabernet Franc, with the final blend aged in 70% new oak. 3.6pH.