1990 Château Léoville Las Cases St. Julien Bordeaux France Wine Tasting Note

The 90 Leoville Las Cases is what great Bordeaux is all about. The wine is full-bodied, rich, deep and intense. Power with elegance, refined and fresh the tannins are perfectly ripe, backing up all the equally perfectly ripe, dark red currants, cigar box, tobacco leaf, cedar, forest leaf and spice. The wine fills your palate and sticks with you in the finish. It took 32 years to get here and will offer fabulous drinking for at least the next two decades with ease.

5,055 Views   Tasted Jan 12, 2022

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At 31 years of age, this is First Growth in quality. This majestic Left Banker offers up tobacco leaf, cigar box, cedar, forest floor, cassis and blackberry aromas. Concentrated, full-bodied and with an incredible sense of richness, depth of flavor and structure, the wine fills your palate with layers of perfectly ripe, earthy red fruits. At the most, 60 minutes in the decanter is all that's needed.

What a fabulous, maturing wine this continues to be. Full-bodied, intense, classic in all the best ways, with a boatload of black currants, cigar box, smoke, tobacco ash, rocks, forest floor, cedar and old wood, this smells great. On the palate, the wine really takes off. Layers of ripe, sweet, delicious fruits with present, but ripe tannins, a good backbone and the ability to age for at least another 3 decades or more.

This is what great, classic Bordeaux is all about! Perfectly balanced between regal and stern, the tannins are refined, the fruit is ripe and pure. Full-bodied, intense, concentrated and complex, every sniff and sip is interesting, making you want to delve deeper to the glass to find out what else is in there. This is just starting to unfurl. Drink it now, and over the next 20-25 years if well-stored.

Blown away by how good this wine is showing. Bought on release and stored in my nice cold cellar, it's been a few years since popping my last cork. Decanted 3 hours, this is a stunner. Powerful, concentrated and dense, the fruit is ripe, rich and deep. The wine really hits all the right spots and coats your palate, teeth and gums with flavor. There is freshness and layers of cassis, cigar box, tobacco and cedar. The tannins are powerful, but they are round, giving you structure and backbone, energy and length. The wine kept improving for another 3 hours. This is the vintage to buy, if you want to see what LLC offers with age. It's 27 years old, and this will be better in 5, 10 or may 20 more years. But it's a treat today, and well worth the cost for a wine at this level.

We're talking fabulous aromas of Cuban tobacco interspersed with cassis, chocolate, Allspice and coffee in this Bordeaux. This wine is huge. Stunningly concentrated. Meaty but refined. Powerful, muscular and flawlessly sophisticated. Still tannic, but the tannins are very elegant. This is First Growth in quality! Still young, well stored bottles will easily last for 50 years!

This is a perplexing wine. Some bottles are tight, holding its obvious charms in reserve. Other bottles are starting to open, becoming expressive. This particular bottle needed more time. Smoke, tobacco, cigar box, grave, cedar chest and cassis scents led to a full bodied, powerful, tannic wine that clearly has more to offer as it develops.

Decanted for 90 minutes, the wine offered scents of tobacco, cassis, truffle, black cherry, smoke, menthol, stone and leather. Full bodied and concentrated with ripe, pure, refined, Cabernet Sauvignon, this is really starting to open up. The long, pure, velvet in an iron glove finish leaves a lasting impression. Most of the tannin has melted away. While the wine should continue to improve, there is no reason to delay popping a bottle if you have more than a few in your cellar. I've tasted this wine a lot over the years. Some bottles have displayed a longer, deeper finish. This was a good, but probably not a perfect bottle. Such is life. I'm looking forward to the next one.

1990 Leoville Las Cases makes itself known with aromatics of Asian spice, earth, fresh blackberry, caramel, cigar box, tobacco and cassis. This powerful, full bodied, rich, intense wine is polished, sophisticated and intense. It fills your mouth with strong, ripe tannins and round textures. The long, pure, concentrated finish could be mistaken for a top First Growth from a great year. Still young, this can be enjoyed today, but it’s only going to get better with time. This is probably my favorite vintage of Leovlle Las Cases at the moment.

With its olive, cassis, cedar and black fruit nose, smells young. The fruit is polished, ripe and pure. There is good intensity and purity to the flavor and the finish is polished

Smoky cassis, cigar ash, truffles, soil, licorice and a mélange of spice are all easy to find. Powerful, yet not demanding, this intense, regal, Cabernet wine is still tannin. But the ripeness of the tannins offers great textures. This structured, full-bodied wine ends with a juicy mouthful of ripe, dark berries, cassis, fennel and earthy flavors. Still young, this has 20-30 more years of life to enjoy.

Huge, massive wine features complex aromas of cassis, wet earth and black fruit. Huge, dense, plush mouth feel makes a seemingly endless finish. Perfect balance. This remains amazingly youthful.