Wine Enthusiast-Aroma is dry, clean, and grainy, with background notes of parchment and litchi; later passes offer semisweet, mildly smoky/ashy scents of charcoal and smoldering embers. Palate entry is firm, moderately oily, bittersweet; at midpalate concentrated and spicy grain flavors mingle adroitly with the smoky, sap- and resin-sweet birch-charcoal filtering influence. Concludes sweetly and almost candy-like. Score: 96-100. August 01, 2005.