FEATURES ARCHIVE

At Christie’s recent tasting of wines from the 1990 vintage in Bordeaux, a client told me the appropriate gift for the 20th anniversary is China, a tradition that seems ripe for a pun given the importance of the Asian market to the wine department.  All joking aside, early this January we realized that the 1990 vintage, one of the hottest and most explosive vintages in the past fifty in Bordeaux, turned twenty and was ripe for a retrospective.

The 1990 vintage, nestled between 1982 and 2000, is sometimes lost in the conversation of the greatest vintages of the 20th century, unfairly in my opinion. While it trades at prices nearly 50% less than 1982 and approximately 20% less than 2000, the 1990 wines drink as well, if not better, than their more expensive counterparts presently. On the surface, the vintages share much in common. All were very hot with a dash of rain in September, all produced large crop levels and all displayed uniform strong quality from top to bottom, left to right. ’90 remains the hottest and driest of the three as large quantities of healthy ripe grapes came to the sorting table (crop thinning was a relatively new and untested procedure at that point). Judging by published commentary on the vintage, ’90 seems to have confused people as it performed well from a young age without ever entering a “dumb phase” as many great wines do, leading many to suspect it as vintage for short terms ageing. 

Needless to say, we in the Christie’s wine department were frothing at the mouth to check in with the 1990 Bordeaux and see how they were holding up. Divine providence occurred in the form of Christie’s Great Estates, an arm of the family empire specializing in luxury real estate. They wanted to showcase a stunning property in the heart of Palm Beach, we wanted to escape the winter in New York and drink 1990 Bordeaux. It was a perfect pairing. 

We built a retrospective of 1990 wines across all of the major communes in Bordeaux and invited friends in Southern Florida to join us at 313 Clarke Avenue on an unseasonably balmy Friday evening in late February for the roll-call of standout Châteaux: Latour, Mouton, Pavie, Cos d’Estournel, La Mission, Palmer, Leoville-Barton, Vieux Château Certan and Domaine de Chevalier. Overall, the wines convinced me that 1990 is a “drink or hold” with peak drinking pleasure taking place between tonight and the next 10 years.

The wine of the night was undoubtedly Château Latour. We experienced a bit of bottle variation, proving again the importance of provenance, but the second bottle was a tightly coiled cougar, full of blackcurrants and plums, with easily a decade left to go. Five hours after a double decant, the Latour continued to gain traction and power. 

Other stars included Château Cos d’Estournel which, like the Latour, improved over the course of the evening. The Cos was much more forward, with lush dark fruits and lots of exotic spices.  I loved the Palmer, which was quintessential Palmer: classy, elegant, subtle with layers of complexity underneath the aristocratic exterior.  Leoville-Barton expressed the most classic Bordeaux profile, with green pepper, pencil lead and currants backed up by a fantastic mineral presence. The Domaine de Chevalier, a wine not often found in a Christie’s lineup but a producer that issued a fantastic wine in ’90, showed the quintessential “claret nose” to quote Charles Curtis, MW, also present at the tasting. 

For me, the other star of the evening was La Mission Haut-Brion. This was an absolute powerhouse. Charles rightly identified its “creamy” texture and my notes highlight its firm structure surrounding a smoky, dark, lush, vibrant fruit core. Mouton 1990 is a controversial wine, but I found it to be a lovely drink.  It certainly is drinking now and does not have the life expectancy of its first growth brethren, but was ripe and round and very forward.  The right bank was represented by Vieux Château Certan and Pavie, the latter being the crowd’s overall favorite.  It represented the hot vintage well, displaying voluptuous red and black fruits that dominated on the palate as well. The Vieux Château  Certan was another one of my top wines of the night, with cocoa powder, brown sugar, plums and figs compactly layered. With a strong tannic structure, the VCC definitely has the legs for a long life. 

It was an amazing convergence of an enthusiastic and knowledgeable crowd, a gorgeous setting and impressive wines.  I can’t wait to check in with ’90 on the 30th birthday, wearing pearls as the gift guide suggests.