Reviews & Scores
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. (Drink between 2024-2050) - VM
VM97February 2024
This was served blind, coincidentally alongside Monte Bello 1991. As when I was lucky enough to taste it at our British Airways wine committee reunion last December, this is a particularly sweet, rich Latour and is already hugely enjoyable even if it seemed to monumental in its youth. Of the two professionals trying to identify the wine, I thought it was a 1990 (and had been told it was a left bank bordeaux) while the other taster wondered whether it was a right bank wine, so exuberant is it. Beautiful completeness and balance - not to mention a gloriously luscious finish. A dream wine. (Drink between 2010-2035) - JR
JR19.5May 2015
This is one of the more perplexing Latours to evaluate. It has plenty of sweetness as well as a gorgeous, rich fruitiness, but it lacks the firmness one finds in more recent great vintages such as 1996, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2008. There is plenty of sweet, ripe currant fruitiness, abundant glycerin, and full body, but I’m still waiting for that extra nuance of complexity to emerge. It’s all there, but the wine still seems to be more monolithic than one would expect in a wine approaching 19 years of age. It is not the sure-fire winner I thought it was in its youth, but then again, I don’t have any reason to doubt that more complexity will emerge. - WA
WA95+June 2009