This wine exceeded my expectations. A surprisingly good wine that serves the vintage well. Soft, pleasant, and effortless. This is not a wine to be intellectualized and analyzed. This is a wine to enjoy. Fully mature and fading, it offers an excellent evolved nose of earthy tobacco and leather. The fruit has taken a back seat. This wine falls off a cliff on the finish. Drink now and enjoy.

Like the Les Ormes de Pez along side of it, this wine exceeded my expectations. Soft, pleasant, and effortless; and pulled ahead of the Les Ormes de Pez with its added depth and finish. This is a wine to enjoy. Fully mature and fading, it had an excellent evolved nose of earthy tobacco and leather. The fruit has taken a back seat, but is still on the palate. Drink now and enjoy.

Tasted with the Pichon Lalande 1996. Like the Pichon Lalande, it's great to finally see this wine turn the corner. I've had this wine two or three times over the last three years, and its core had each time been cloaked with tannin. But no more. This wine is still young, but open for business. More evolved than the Pichon Lalande, the GPL had an earthy, almost funky, nose. Not a pure expression of Cabernet like the Pichon Lalande. But delicious nonetheless. Great depth, and a long finish. Maybe the 1996s are finally opening up?

Outstanding. Still young, but I believe this wine has finally turned the corner. I had this same wine exactly one year ago, and the tannin has since softened enough to yield to the core of wonderful fresh fruit. No signs of developing any tertiary aromas and flavors yet. Still full of pure Cabernet typicity. Delicious.

A very good wine. A gamey, bloody, fleshy nose added a layer of unexpected complexity. The flavors on the palate were as expected, but unremarkable. Soft and approachable, and certainly enjoyable. I am a fan on the 1989s, but I didn't find this wine to have the "exciting" factor I was hoping for. This was a polarizing wine at the table. Some people thought this wine was outstanding, and some thought it fell below expectations. The nose was by any standard outstanding, but I think the wine lost momentum on the palate.

Delicious. This is a big wine. Deep, mouth-coating flavors. The 1989s have a "delicious" factor that is on full display with this wine.

What an extraordinary wine! Fully mature, but no where near the sunset of its life. Remarkably deep color for its age; no signs of fading. Seamless from the nose, to the palate, to the finish. Elegant, soft, powerful, deep, and focused all at once, and yet almost weightless across the palate. Still full of fruit. Pulled out of an unbroken OWC by the original purchaser. Kept in ideal cellar conditions since the original purchase.