1990 Château Latour

Elegant, sophisticated, long, and exciting, this is a fabulous Pauillac that delivers the goods as soon as the wine hits your glass. Majestic and regal, long and refined, the seamless, long, lingering finish fills every nook and cranny of your palate. This stately wine is superb and has entered its drinking window.

The 1990 Latour, served from double magnum direct from the château, is a magnificent wine. It is a showstopping bouquet that explodes from the glass. Oodles of blackberry mixes with cedar and glycerin. This is Latour at its most aromatically decadent. Perhaps due to provenance and format, the aromatics are also the most youthful. The palate is medium-bodied with wonderful poise. The graphite element is more pronounced in this larger format, fanning out gloriously toward the finish to complete one of the finest examples I have encountered of this wine. Tasted at the Académie du Vin dinner in Bordeaux.

A classic, powerful, regal Latour, the 1990 is solidly in its drink window and has a still-ruby hue as well as a gorgeous perfume of darker currants, tobacco leaf, new saddle leather, and graphite. It opens up beautifully with air and has the perfect mix of great fruit and purity with mature and complex, cedary nuances. Full-bodied on the palate, perfectly balanced, and with sweet yet still present tannins, it can safely be enjoyed any time over the coming 40-50 years.