This is so beautiful now and exhibits real aged-Bordeaux character with currant-bush, tobacco and berry aromas that follow through to a medium body with firm tannins and a creamy finish. Still so together. The finish turns to cigar box, sandalwood and berry. Drink or hold.

This was my last bottle of ’85 Lafite out of the cellar, as I only bought three bottles when it was released and dearly wish I had bought more, as the wine is rather more expensive today than it was back in 1987! This is an utterly brilliant year for Lafite and one of my favorite wines of the vintage, as it offers up a deep and very complex nose of cassis, sweet dark berries, a touch of fresh coconut, beautifully complex, gravelly soil tones, cigar smoke, fresh herbs and cedar. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and very refined, with a rock solid core of sappy fruit, stunning complexity, impeccable focus and balance, moderate tannins and a fairly powerful finish (particularly for Lafite from this era) that closes with great purity and grip. A brilliant synthesis of the vintage’s plush and suave personality and the inimitable elegance of Lafite.

A week after tasting it from bottle, I re-tasted the 1985 Lafite-Rothschild from imperial. This has greater purity on the nose, perhaps less sauvage with vivacious red fruit, though cedar and allspice traits still come through with time. The palate is medium-bodied with those same pliant tannins that lend this First Growth such fluidity. This is not powerful—it is Lafite not Latour—but it is beautifully balanced with hints of black truffle and pencil shavings towards the finish. The 1985 is utterly charming and drinking beautifully. Tasted at the Académie du Vin dinner in Bordeaux. -- Neal Martin

The finest of tannins draws this out slowly and confidently, capturing scents of crushed roses, incense, tobacco leaf and white truffle alongside sage, salted cracker, mint, blackberry and raspberry fruits, everything so fully integrated that you can barely tell where one flavour ends and the next begins. Captures the finesse, subtlety and elegance that is such a signature of Lafite when it is fully mature and in an extended drinking window - and from experience I would say that it will stay in this moment for a good few decades more. Driest September on record at the time. Baron Eric de Rothschild heading up the estate at the time, Gilbert Rokvam technical director, Charles Chevallier had joined from Rieussec a few years before. The vineyard was 90ha in the mid 1980s, so around 20ha smaller than today.

Tasted at the château, the 1985 Lafite-Rothschild was the best example of this wine that I have tasted a dozen or so times. It has a beautiful nose that is just classic Lafite. It is still fresh yet understated, stately even, with tobacco and cedar-tinged red berry fruit. It is not a powerful bouquet, but there is something...magnetic about it. The palate is still youthful with fine tannin, like the nose, understated yet very well balanced. The acidity here is perfectly judged with an almost nonchalant finish. You almost miss its virtues - it is just so self-effacing and insouciant. Just a really lovely Lafite-Rothschild at the peak of its powers. Tasted March 2016. - Neal Martin

The 1985 Château Lafite-Rothschild is fully mature yet still has classic Lafite elegance, with that tell-tale cedar pencil note in spades. Mature red and black fruits, cedar, smoked tobacco, and savory herb and leather notes all give way to a medium-bodied, elegant, finesse-driven Lafite that has resolved tannins and beautiful overall balance. It's not massive or overtly concentrated, yet I love its overall grace, balanced, and complexity. I would drink them if I had them.