Le Dôme· Saint-Émilion

Most of Saint-Émilion's great names lean on Merlot. Le Dôme does the opposite, and that inversion is its whole argument. Jonathan Maltus built this wine from 1996 on a steep amphitheatre of clay-limestone beside Angélus, and he planted it to a majority of Cabernet Franc, the variety this corner of the plateau ripens with unusual completeness.

The Franc is what you taste: violets, graphite, red plum, a perfume that lifts above the wine's considerable depth. It is raised in a high proportion of new oak, but the fruit and the limestone carry it without strain. The newer cellar that crowns the hill has become one of the more talked-about buildings in Bordeaux; happily, the wine inside it has kept pace.

I think of Le Dôme as Saint-Émilion's most convincing case for Cabernet Franc as a lead voice rather than a supporting one. I allocate it to drinkers who want perfume and precision over sheer weight.