BY NEAL MARTIN | FEBRUARY 14, 2025

Following Antonio Galloni’s take on this year’s late releases from Château Latour (the First Growth having exited the customary primeur campaign in 2012), here is my own take on the trio that will hit the market this March. The headline-grabbing release is the 2016 Latour, a vintage that I have tasted in bottle a couple of times at the château and at the Southwold tasting. Without doubt, it is a dazzling wine that will rank amongst the pinnacles of the decade, though I am glad that I waited 30 minutes to let it unfold in my glass. This was a useful time to chat with head winemaker Hélène Genin, the talent behind recent legendary vintages. Is it sexist in any way to suggest that I think Genin has lent this traditionally tannic and muscular wine that needed years to mellow a welcome feminine touch? Certainly, the 2016 is a vintage imbued with more approachability than say, the 2010, the tannins now a little more pliant with less bone-crunching grip on the finish. Having tasted over 60 vintages of Latour, I would not hesitate to place the 2016 amongst the top-tier vintages produced over the last century. Naturally, bottles ain’t gonna be cheap, but at least it is flanked by the 2019 Les Forts de Latour and 2020 Pauillac de Latour, the latter perhaps the best I have tasted and equal to some of the appellation’s Grand Vins.  

It will be interesting to see how these releases fare in a market coping with strong economic headwinds and a softening of market prices even at the top end. Then again, it is Latour, and we are talking about arguably the greatest vintage of recent years. Tempted?

The 2020 Pauillac de Latour is similar to the bottle tasted blind at the Southwold tasting the previous January. Scents of black fruit and graphite emerge on the nose, still with that touch of melted road tar. The palate is medium-bodied, with blackberry and blueberry fruit, perhaps leaning more toward the former with a tad of strictness on the finish. If there is a better Troisième Vin than this, I've yet to taste it. 92/Drink: 2028-2040 

The 2019 Les Forts de Latour has an open nose, strangely perhaps a little more expressive than the 2020 Pauillac de Latour at the moment. Scents of blackberry, cassis and iris flower unfold in the glass. The palate is medium-bodied with crushed stone infusing the black fruit. This has attained more linearity since I encountered it in January 2023. The 2019 will give two or three decades of pleasurable drinking. 94/Drink: 2030-2055 

The 2016 Latour is a vintage that I have tasted a couple of times post-bottling. On one occasion, it warranted a perfect score, but that was then moot since this vintage had not been released. Now that it is due to hit the shelves this coming March, does the wine still merit that three-digit accolade? Without question, yes.  Deep lucid deep purple in color, it seems to shimmer in the glass. The bouquet plays with you, a bit of a femme fatale, distant for the first few minutes. Then, it magically coalesces and gains incredible intensity with blackberry, pencil lead, background hints of oyster shell and notes of Japanese wakame. The aromatics announce exactly which château you are doing business with. The palate is medium-bodied with filigreed tannins, again, as I found before, blessed with beguiling symmetry and ineffable poise. Residing firmly on the black side of the fruit spectrum, there is underlying mineralité. Veins of cassis run through the persistent finish. This is everything you could really wish for in a Latour. The 2016 can be uttered in the same breath as the 1900, 1924, 1959, 1961, 1982 and 2010. Magnificent. 100/Drink: 2032-2075

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