RATING: 92 points
The 1996 Petrus is a big, monolithic, foursquare wine with an impressively opaque purple color and sweet berry fruit inter-mixed with earth, toast, and coffee scents. Full-bodied and muscular, with high levels of tannin and a backward style, this wine (less than 50% of the production was bottled as Petrus) will require patience. It is a mammoth example, but without the sweetness of the 1997 or the pure, exceptional richness and layers of the multidimensional 1995. Anticipated matu-rity: 2010-2035.