Vintage 1990

Following a banner 1989 vintage across most of Europe, 1990 pulled out all the stops to produce one of the best vintages of all time.

France experienced one of the hottest, sunniest years of the 20th century in 1990, with practically perfect conditions across the year producing a bumper crop of healthy, phenolically ripe grapes.

In Bordeaux, the Left Bank produced an abundance of stunning, powerful wine across all quality levels; the Right Bank appellations of St-Emilion and Pomerol even more so. The top growths could count on wines with fruit concentration, ripe tannins and fine structure to cellar for decades. Ditto Sauternes.

Further north, Burgundy, in particular the Côte de Nuits, enjoyed a vintage to remember, with the 1990s wines of, for example, DRC, Dujac and Rousseau now among the most sought-after by collectors.

In Champagne, the 1990s were declared ‘legendary’ on release, with the best examples now at the peak of their maturity. In Italy, many critics agreed that 1990 in Piedmont and Tuscany was ‘the vintage of the century’. And, rarely, California’s unusually good vintage conditions matched those of the Old World, yielding wines of comparable power, complexity and extraordinary longevity.