A Tale of Two 1989s
No.2 | What's In My Glass
The holidays are for celebrating! 2023 was a pretty good year for me, and that warranted opening something memorable. So on Christmas Eve I opened the Château de Chaintres 1989 Saumur-Champigny, and on New Year’s Eve I opened the Alain et Jérôme Lenoir 1989 Chinon “Les Roches.”
The 1989 vintage is widely regarded as one of the best vintages (if not the best vintage) of the 1980s for Loire Valley Cabernet Franc. According to Richard Kelley MW’s blog, 1989 was “considered the vintage of the generation and some commentators claim it as the vintage of the century. It was certainly the best year since 1964.” It was as perfect a vintage if there ever was one. There was no frost, flowering happened at precisely the right moment, the summer was very warm, sunny and dry, producing wines with great phenolic development, structure and concentration that could go the distance and reward with cellaring.
One might think that it would be difficult for the average consumer to get their hands on an ‘89 …