Chateau Tertre Roteboeuf, Saint-Emilion Grand Cru 1990

The 1990 Tertre-Rôteboeuf is a vintage that I have not encountered for some time. This has quite a refined nose with dark berry fruit, orange liqueur, kirsch and camphor. Fine delineation. The palate is medium-bodied with finely sculpted tannins, very balanced and definitely the most sensual of the 1990s tasted here. Not as alcoholic as one might expect, there is just a tincture of dried blood towards the savoury, persistent finish. This is drinking beautifully. Tasted single blind at the 1990 Bordeaux dinner at Medlar.

Early in its life, this wine was close to perfection, but two bottles drunk recently from my cellar show a slight maderized quality, some flawed acetone notes, and a disjointed style suggesting it was falling apart. I am at a loss to understand this decline as it was showing fabulously well just a few years ago. There is still lots of viscosity, and the wine is full-bodied, but two examples of an oxidized, flawed wine are disheartening.A third bottle from the exact same case that the first two bottles came from proved to be a completely different species altogether. This is the 1990 Tertre Roteboeuf I thought had been made. I have no explanation for such enormous bottle variation, but the third bottle had a beautiful dark plum/garnet color to the rim, with just a hint of lightening, a sensationally exotic nose of roasted coffee, melted chocolate, herbs, and sweet kirsch and plum. Even a hint of fig made it into the wine’s gorgeous aromatic display. In the mouth, the wine was full-bodied, powerful, rich, still showing some tannin to shed, but the sweetness, expansiveness, exuberance, and overall purity were stunning. This wine, which had the same level of ullage as the other two, was a completely different experience than the two bottles that had a maderized characteristic. Who knows, but I am certainly hoping the rest of my stash resembles the third bottle rather than the first two. If that’s the case, then it should continue to drink well for at least another 10-12 years. Release price: ($550.00/case)