Château L'IF· Saint-Émilion

When Jacques Thienpont, the man behind Le Pin, took on a tiny plot in Saint-Émilion in 2010, the wine world paid attention, and rightly so. Château L'IF is his right-bank counterpoint: the same obsessive, small-scale hand, transplanted from Pomerol's clay to the limestone of the Saint-Émilion plateau.

Two hectares on calcaire à astéries, the fossil-rich limestone that gives the appellation its finest wines their tension and length. Here the result is something quite different from Le Pin, cooler, more transparent, threaded with iron, chalk and red fruit rather than wrapped in flesh. The Cabernet Franc has a real say, and the limestone shows plainly.

It is made in minute quantity, and demand far outstrips it. I treat my allocation accordingly. For anyone who wants to understand what limestone does to a Thienpont wine, this is the bottle, give it the better part of a decade.