1999 Lynch Bages

Deep ruby with a tight garnet rim. Classic Lynch Bages nose-cassis, lead-pencil, forest floor, cigar-box, minerality -very balanced yet towards the tertiary side, herbs and damp earth. The structured palate profile follows the nose and has a lovely softness to it. Tamed tannins—a soft, medium-bodied claret leads to a fine, medium finish. The bottle is excellent and underrated- scores are mediocre for the class of wine, for example

90 points Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

A charming, lush, round, generous Lynch Bages, the 1999 offers plenty of sweet black currant fruit, damp earth, licorice, cedarwood and spicy herb-like characteristics. Medium-bodied, savory and broad in the mouth with no hard edges, this fully mature effort is a somewhat underrated vintage for this estate. (RP) (8/2011)

90 points Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar

Creme de cassis complemented by floral, tobacco and incense notes on the brightly aromatic nose. Very well balanced, clean, and juicy, with good inner-mouth perfume and energy to the dark fruit, cedar, herb and graphite flavors. The finish features mounting tannins that teeter on the brink of drying. This seems to have picked up some flesh and volume with bottle age, but I hope the fruit outlives the tannins. It's a lovely wine that lacks only the power of the best vintages. (ID) (1/2012)

Vinous

The 1999 Lynch-Bages, now at 20 years of age, has a modest, quite attractive bouquet of blackberry, dried fig, leather and faint touches of mint. There is still good vigor here considering its age. The palate is medium-bodied with relatively light tannins for Lynch-Bages. There is a core of sweetness here, hints of brown sugar sprinkled over the light red fruit that appears to have faded in recent years. A simple Lynch-Bages relative to recent vintages, rather conservative and missing some grip on the finish. (NM)