1990 Paul Jaboulet Aîné Hermitage La Chapelle Hermitage Rhône France Wine Tasting Note

One of the best bottles of this I have tasted in ages provides notes of flowers, spice, earth, kirsch, blueberry, and blackberry in the perfume. Lively, rich, intense, and dense, with layers of dark, ripe, powerful, vibrant, chewy red fruits, this is really in a good spot, and if well-stored, should get even better. Drink from 2023-2050.

3,417 Views   Tasted Sep 1, 2023

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Deep in color, with power, intensity, vibrancy, and a boatload of herbs, olives, tobacco wrapper, spice, black and red fruits. The wine is full-bodied, structured and vibrant, finishing with a wealth of red and black fruits, green olives, and herbs with real staying power. This is no longer young, but it is not fully mature, for that, you need to wait maybe 5-10 years. This could be a 75 year wine if well-stored.

It is a different experience tasting great wines in magnum, after only experiencing them for years in bottle. With a refined quality to the tannins, the concentration, depth of flavor and length was there. But this seems to have developed along its own course, there was an additional layer of softness on the texture, that paired great with the purity of fruit. My guess it, part of the development here was due to the large format, but the advanced character probably came about due to some storage issues along the way. A perfect magnum with provenance must be mind boggling.

Compelling in every way. The wine is incredibly concetrated with all the right stuff. Perfectly ripe, spicy, mineral driven berries, pepper and earth round on the experience, leaving with a blast of fruit that remains on your palate for at least 60 seconds. Still young, this is a thrill to drink today, and it's going to get better and better with more age.

I cannot believe I've tasted this wine 4 times over the past two months, and with very consistent results. This specific bottle was good, but not great. Rich, big, deep and concentrated, the aromatics kicked off with licorice, tobacco, earth, iron, blackberries and black cherries. Powerful, long and young, as good as it is now, it's only starting to open.

Still young, vibrant and fresh, with a deep hue, the wine popped with a complicated perfume packed with boysenberry liqueur, black cherry, flowers, herbs, pepper, licorice, spice and forest floor aromas. Rich, concentrated, powerful and structured, there is a regal quality to the fruit that shines through every step of the way. I've had slightly better bottles that merited triple digits. But this was very close. Drink this now, or age it for decades.

I’ve been blessed to have tasted this majestic wine several times this year. In fact, I had this wine twice last week! Even more amazing is the remarkable level of consistency the wine continues to perform at. At days from its 23rd birthday, it’s really starting to come into its own, with its showy display of ripe blackberry, plum and cherries complicated by wet earth, smoke, minerals, garrigue and spice. On the palate, the wine is incredibly dense, with polished textures and no hard edges. The finish is expansive, thick, seamless and long, lasting for over 60 seconds! Over the years, this wine continues to develop layers of complexities, intensity of flavor and silky textures. If you’ve never tasted an Hermitage that blew you away, if you have the money, this is the wine to buy.

As hard as it is to believe, at almost 22 years of age, this looks and tastes like a young wine. Deeply colored, with a nose filled with spice, black plum, gravel, iron, pepper, grilled meat, blackberry and cassis, the wine is packed and stacked with layers of ripe, deep, pure, sensuous fruit. Still tannic and needed several more years before its fully mature, this exciting wine is powerful, glycerin filled and intense. The wine ends in a beautiful display of plush, ripe, decadent, fleshy, flashy black and red fruit.

1990 Jaboulet La Chapelle had 2 or 3 different bottling dates. When tasted from the first bottlng, (there is no way to tell) the wine os one of the top Hermitage wines ever produced! And this was a very good bottle. The wine oozes out of the glass sliding over your palate in wave after wave of deep, dark, lush frui, spices, minerals, pepper, licorice, cassis and berries. Still young, in another decade or two when this wine is fully mature, the best bottles will deliver an amazing tasting experience.

Purple, black in color, this blackberry and cassis wine offers earth, olives, truffles, damp forest and earthy, peppery scents. The wine is opulent and fleshy with refined, elegant tannins. The dense, black fruit filled palate is lush with a backbone for aging. In many ways, it reminded me of slightly less concentrated version of the legendary ’61

The nose, with its earthy, mineral, truffle, pepper scent was exciting. The wine felt great in the mouth, but it seemed to lack some of the density and youthful quality found in other bottles I’ve had

There is a lot of bottle variation in this wine. I’ve heard the wine was bottled in two separate batches. The first batch reminds me of essence of Syrah. The second batch, held in wood for several additional months lacks the same level of purity, freshness and complexity. There is no way to tell which bottle came from which batch from looking at the bottles. This bottle probably came from the second batch. While it displayed some of the wonderful flashy, opulent, ripe, black fruit qualities, it did not offer the level of intensity found in the best examples. Still good, but not profound.

With coaxing, you could sense the concentration, extraction and depth of ripe, black fruits and flavors, but it remains very primary. Another decade and this will assuredly morph into something unique