Huge wine. Dark ruby-colored. Intense aromas of ripe fruit and game. Full-bodied and compacted with masses of tannins and fruit yet still closed and not giving much on the palate. Give this brute time. Best Cantemerle ever?--1989 Bordeaux horizontal. Best after 2004. (JS)

Just a beautiful wine that lives up to its reputation as one of the stellar vintages of Cantemerle, showing what can be achieved on this site. Easy to sink into, charcoal, incense, roses, feathery melted tannins, crystalline quality, pure joy, extremely easy to drink. Pascal Berteau technical director at the time, spent pretty much his whole career here except for a stint at Mouton. A huge yield in 1989, they fermented then moved out the wine out of the vats and put in the next lot of grapes three times! Blend given is plantings in the vineyard at the time. Rebottled in 2000.

I have always liked the 1989 Château Cantemerle since its very earliest days, and at age twenty-five, the wine is really starting to drink at its apogee. The bouquet is pure, complex and classy, offering up scents of cassis, cigar smoke, a bit of charred wood, dark soil tones, exotic spice overtones (curry?) and cedar. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and still shows off a bit of tannin, with fine mid-palate concentration, excellent focus and grip and a very long, complex and generous finish. This was still in the era where the Cordier team was in charge of the winemaking at Cantemerle, and the style is a bit more extracted during this epoch and the 1989 does not possess quite the same refinement as is found in the excellent 1996 version. But, this is still a very well-made wine and a strong vintage for Cantemerle. 2014-2040+.

An over-performer that can still make for a shrewd purchase at auction, the 1989 Cantemerle offers up inviting aromas of rich currant fruit, blackberries, loamy soil and cigar wrapper. Medium to full-bodied, rich and fleshy, with a generous core of fruit, melting tannins, ripe acids and a sapid finish, it's drinking beautifully today. - William Kelley