The 1990 Clarets...To Have and To Hold

 You read it here first, folks. The New York Wine Cellar was the first publication in America to inform you that 1990 produced at least as many great, collectible clarets as the previous year, and to recommend that, rather than go hog-wild over the '89s, you save some of your available funds for the '90s. Now that the '90 clarets have had a year or more in bottle, it is clear that this vintage is a fitting exclamation point to the greatest decade, weather-wise, in the long history of Bordeaux.

That does not mean that 1990 can be bought blind. Far from it. 1989, as we wrote a year ago, produced an opulent, extremely ripe and variable crop of wines. But only the best of these wines have the levels of extract and underlying structure to offer exciting medium- term development potential. The same can be said about 1990.