2018 Arbois Pupillin Pulsard

Exceptionally, I tasted a sample of the red 2018 Arbois Pupillin Ploussard, a bright ruby colored red with an explosive nose of watermelon, raspberries and some smoky meat (pigeon?), which gives it a bit of a funky touch, with something earthy and a note of licorice but following the cleaner and more precise style of the reds of the last few years. It used to take the reds ten years to come around, but the recent vintages can be drunk much earlier. 2018 was a ripe year, and the grapes ripened properly, but the wine manages to keep the freshness, right now aided by some carbonic gas that is still dissolved in the wine. It has energy and tension on the palate, but it's also nicely structured and has ripe tannins that are not as sharp as they can be in some cooler years. This is not yet bottled, but the 2017 was already bottled when I tasted this in May 2019, so this could be bottled in the next six to ten months.