1990 Chevalier Montrachet

Bright, full yellow. Knockout nose combines very ripe yellow fruits, lemon cream, roasted nuts, vanilla and minerals. Plush and voluptuous on the palate, but with a lovely spine of acidity and penetrating minerality giving shocking freshness to the flavors of apricot, orange zest and menthol and buffering the wine's thickness and sweetness. This amazingly opulent, powerful grand cru conveys an almost bitter edge of dry extract. As chewy as a solid on the echoing, palate-staining finish, which boasts outstanding mineral thrust and energy. This could easily turn out to be a 40-year white Burgundy. (14.1% alcohol; 3.23 pH; the harvest began on September 19 after a very sunny growing season)

While I entertained higher expectations of the 1989, it was in fact the 1990 Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru that emerged as the wine of the tasting, blossoming in the glass with a complex bouquet of confit lemon, orange rind, dried white flowers, pastry cream, warm bread and vanilla pod. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, satiny textured and enveloping, with broad shoulders, a lively spine of acidity and superb amplitude and concentration, concluding with a long, penetrating finish. Powerful and strikingly complete, this is a Chevalier that more than nods to Montrachet in style. But by the numbers alone, it was cropped at 57 hectoliters per hectare and finished up with 14.1% alcohol and pH 3.23. This is by some margin the finest bottle of Leflaive's 1990 Chevalier-Montrachet that I've encountered.