1959 Château Lafite Rothschild

Community Tasting Notes (110) Avg Score: 95.7 points

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  4/8/2024 - joshabramson Likes this wine: 97 Points

  Super fresh, structure very much still in tact, with delicate and pretty fruit. I only had a small taste from this bottle, but it was very fine.

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  1/27/2024 - sdr Likes this wine: 94 Points

  Whole Lotta Lafite; 1/26/2024-1/27/2024 (Wine Watch, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida): Fabulous mature Lafite from one of its most successful old vintages - but only for about 20 minutes. Beautiful Lafite fragrance of berry and dried flowers. Remarkably full and rich mid palate. Black and red fruit, beautiful structure and balance with just the right acidity and melted tannins. Unfortunately became less clean and lost focus after a while, but the first 20 minutes were a 97 point experience.

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  1/2/2024 - Ozen Likes this wine: 100 Points

  Lafite Rothschild 1959, a privilege. A truly remarkably good bottle despite the ullage due to its age (it makes you wonder how it can still be perfect with that much air). Very promising: the cork is fully in tact while soaked, but clearly a champion league cork for fulfilling its duty for the full 65 years. Impressive.
  Always concerned how long a wine of this age will hold after opening, I poured the first glass right after the cork extracting (no popping here). First impression: slight signs of age in the bouquet. So even more amazing to see that it actually took a few minutes for this legend to fully come to life. We are talking minutes here of course. But to have to have a 65 year old wine benefit from breathing is quite amazing. But then it did open up in a majestic way.
  
  A deep sensational, utterly rich and beautiful elixer. One of the very best bottles so far. Super intense, super rich, wonderfully concentrated, deep orangey flavours, while deeply aristocratic, velvet, so vivid, full of life in its own royal way. It does make me realize its a privilege to experience Lafite 1959. This wine justifies the use of many superlatives. All these words are useless, as a description can't do justice to an experience like this, only the actual experience can. The aftertaste literally lingers for minutes... after the wine has left, its presence is soaring.... if not taking residence in your palet. It's aftertaste is that long.
  
  Truly legendary

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  12/31/2023 - misterstarre Likes this wine: 97 Points

  This Lafite was not nearly as loud as the vintage, known for its robust and ripe fruit. Its beauty was obvious, but delicate and restrained. It's allure, soft-spoken and effortless. The sensuality of this wine was natural. It's texture was like the smoke from an extinguished candle. It built on itself with each sniff and sip. This has such an elegance.
  
  This wine aged marvellously. My half-bottle (yes, half-bottle) was initially tired for about ten minutes with muted fruit, but no unpleasant cellar funk or surripe anything. Ten minutes later, it was awake. On the nose, this offers hay, fresh tobacco, dark red and black berries, currant, cigar box, and mild spice. The tannins stiffened up a bit and the wine stood upright for the rest of the night, gaining some freshness. Along with the notes from the nose coming through on the palate, there was a touch of game. Dark red color with violet highlights and decent clarity. The nose was arguably the best part. The nose had impact. I drank from a standard glass, but it may as well have been whole cluster pinot from a large-bowled glass. Damn. It was -- much to my pleasure -- the only exuberant element of this wine. The nose showed the personality of a fully expressive wine at peak. The palate had less power, but echoed its complexities while adding notes of charcoal in the back end and finish.
  
  Compared with other 59s, 61s, and 66s I've had, this was the most solid, stable, "middle-aged" of the bunch. It's nowhere near the molasses, pine, and soy sauce notes Bordeaux tends to pick up in geriatrics. This honestly tasted, in terms of style and nearly in terms of age, like a 1990. I'm exaggerating a little, but it feels like there's lots of development ahead, and more tertiary flavors yet to emerge.

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  11/10/2023 - Quiet Lion Likes this wine: 94 Points

  From 375, decanted briefly. Stellar showing! I was concerned this would fall apart quickly but it actually kept improving over the half-hour we shared this legendary birthday wine. Still sending me her valentine, I guess.

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