Luminescent garnet red, touch of tawny towards the pale rim.  Your typically elegant Ducru nose:  intense mineral-driven fruit, turned earth, and a brilliant depth of soil.  Black and red currant, mulberry and roses.  Medium body.  Seemless, integrated, regal tannins.  Correct acidity.  A nice length.  This has perfect balance: both very Ducru and very ’85.  Not a great wine if your yardstick is the fruit’s size, power and weight.  It is a wine with great poise, harmony, typicity, class and complexity.  Will Ducru ’82 outlive it?  Sure.  But as I was telling Barb as we drank: may I be so fortunate as to age as gracefully as Ducru ’85.  In this sense, this is not just yardstick St.-Julien but benchmark claret.  A grande dame of a wine.