1989 Château Gruaud Larose

The 1989 Gruaud Larose is a vintage that I tasted regularly back in the day - it was reliably inconsistent, and you prayed for a good bottle. I bought this bottle with sound provenance…sadly, it was not a good bottle. It was not corked, but the fruit was definitely scalped on the nose, a little metallic. The palate is angular, and again, it feels, for want of a better word, lobotomized. Nobody drank more than a couple of sips out of curiosity. Caveat emptor. Tasted at the 1989 dinner at Piccolino in London.

A classic, old school Saint-Julien, the 1989 Château Gruaud Larose offers a smorgasbord-like array of red and black fruits, saddle leather, cigar box, and smoke tobacco. Medium-bodied and nicely concentrated, with good mid-palate density, it's not the most elegant wine and still has some present tannins, but it sure brings plenty of character. It opens up nicely with time in the glass as well, and while it's unquestionably drinking at point, it certainly has another 15 years of evolution.

The 1989 Gruaud Larose is evolving very slowly, and its impressively youthful structure and vibrant flavors auger very well for its future. Offering up aromas of sweet berry fruit, cigar wrapper, loamy soil and cedar, it's medium to full-bodied, with a rich core of fruit, lively acids and fine but still present tannins. As this develops in the cellar, it's showing more plenitude and mid-palate volume than it did a decade ago, and for patient readers this is emerging as a comparatively underestimated 1989 Médoc.