1990 Château La Tour Haut-Brion

Community Tasting Notes (10) Avg Score: 91.5 points

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  1/28/2024 - HeavyPourWine Likes this wine: 93 Points

  Wine and Cigars on a cold and rainy Sunday (Atlanta, GA): '90s vertical tasting: Caparzo La Casa BDM, Leoville Las Cases and La Tour Haut Brion. I picked this bottle up from Martin wine store in St. Emilion on our trip to Bordeaux last summer. Glad I could share this with good friends! Color is red with brownish tint. PNP and paired steak and potatoes. Tobacco spice nose. Pepper and black fruit on palate. Black fruit. At or just a bit past peak. Very nice showing! Brad - heavypourwine.com

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  4/24/2022 - Cailles wrote: 91 Points

  48x 1990 (37x Bdx, 6x Napa, 5x others): Haut Brion vs Mission HB vs La Tour HB. Winner and overall the best wine of the 1990 tasting as a whole was the spectacular Mission (98 pts) full of telltale Pessac tobacco and truffles. Layered, intense, sharp, creamy and vivid, long, superbly complete. The HB (95 pts) showed younger and less complex but my guess is that it should get to the level of the Mission with more air and/or age. The La Tour HB (91 pts) was good but with less in every category and it didn’t show enough finesse.
  
  TN: Not overly expressive nose with dark fruit, minerality, smoke. On the palate it shows lots of structure, freshness, still slightly angular tannins but balanced by a nice creaminess. Medium complexity with fresh dark fruit, herbs, minerality, smoke and not yet much tertiary aromas. Overall quite nice but without anything exceptional. 91 pts. For more it would need more finesse and complexity.
  
  Decanting: Quick double decant two+ hours prior to the tasting to remove sediment. Maybe 2, 3 hours in the decanter would have helped to make things smoother.

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  12/12/2020 - RobbieD68 Likes this wine: 91 Points

  Wow, this was something else. When opened (after considerable effort, as the cork disintegrated under pressure), we decanted to 3 hours and occasionally went back to it, with barnyard being the first aroma that came to mind. After time it developed into leather, wet hay, grass, and other earthy notes. Eventually we got just a hint of fruit, but barely, and by then we had consumed most of it. Probably could have gone another 10 years.

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  2/12/2020 - Jeff Leve wrote: 92 Points

  Concentrated, powerful, beefy and leaning slightly to the rustic side with its tannins, the nose is just great. It is all about the cigar box, tobacco, smoked meat, cedar and spicy side, with a jumble of red fruits. This is not a delicate wine. Instead, it is quite old-school. This is close to its peak level of maturity.

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  11/24/2015 - amred wrote: 91 Points

  A classic aged Bordeaux. I am consistently surprised at how even middle of the road Bordeaux, especially prior to the more inform and heavy Parker style, age so well. Other wines at similar price points ($23 at purchase!) may have been good, but very few are terrific 25 years later. My notes similar to others: tobacco, leather, graphite both in the nose and mouth. While certainly not improving with further age, still drinking really well. Love old Bordeaux!

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