1990 San Leonardo
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Tasting notes
The 1990 San Leonardo is yet another vintage that shows the perfect unity of a sunny year coupled with the house style. It leaps from the glass with an intense array of crushed blackberry, cherry, tobacco and rich brown spices, gaining freshness over time. Smoky stone dust gives way to sweet floral perfumes. It's soft and inviting with silky richness. Darker and more brooding than the surrounding vintages, but also with a sweetness to the fruit that is wonderfully balanced by nervous acidity. The long and lightly structured finale shows more of the wine’s maturity, with earthy notes and moist undergrowth. The 1990 is the product of one of San Leonardo’s driest and sunniest vintages (1985 being another). While I tend to be a bigger fan of the classic years, there’s no denying how absolutely gorgeous this wine is.
Critic scores
Average Score
Robert Parker
Monica Larner, Wine Advocate
More reviews and scores
The standout 1990 San Leonardo is a wine of towering achievement and aspiration. It is an illuminating experience. It vaunts its beauty and pedigree from the outset with gorgeous dark fruit that is followed by nutmeg, clove, bresaola and dark mineral. The growing season saw very little rain and this led to increased concentration and intensity of fruit. It also counted many more sunlight hours (tabbed in at 1,407 hours) that makes this, along with 1985, the estate's sunniest year. The wine is ready to drink now and shows the potential to evolve further. It has the muscle to endure a longer decanting period of three hours or more.
The intensely chocolatey, smoky, prune, and plum-scented 1990 possesses a dark, thick-looking garnet color. Although tannic, it exhibits copious quantities of sweet fruit, and aromas of earth, animal fur, grilled meat, and black fruits. Exurberant, savory, big, and husky, this is a large-scaled, rustic wine that will benefit from 2-3 years of cellaring; it will last for two decades. It is impressive, if somewhat uncivilized. Importer: Vias Imports, New York, NY; tel. (212) 629-0200