Wine List

Tasted from my cellar, this wine is fully mature, not terribly concentrated, and slightly herbaceous, exhibiting aromas of sweaty saddle leather, melted asphalt, tobacco, and red as well as black fruits. Notions of caramel and roasted nuts also emerge. A medium-bodied effort with soft tannin, but little persistence and length, it requires consumption over the next decade.

Score: 88 Robert Parker, Bordeaux Book (4), December 2003

Score: 87 Robert Parker, Bordeaux Book (3), November 1998

Score: 88 Robert Parker, Wine Advocate (129), June 2000

This wine was tasted from my personal collection, following the Latour tasting. The 1985 Latour is a soft, open-knit example, without much structure, delineation, and depth. The dark ruby color displays amber at the edge. The bouquet of tobacco, black fruits, herbs, earth, and new oak is pleasant, but neither intense nor persistent. The wine is medium-bodied, with sweet fruit on the attack, but it narrows out to reveal dry tannin and herbaceous notes. Anticipated maturity: now-2012.

Score: 88 Robert Parker, Wine Advocate (129), April 2000

Score: 94 James Suckling, Wine Spectator, August 2000

Almost as great as the 1982. Dense and luscious with amazingly deep plum, blackberry and chocolate aromas and flavors. Full-bodied and full tannins. A wine with a terrific future. Try after 1998.--The Bordeaux 50. (JS) 95points

  James Suckling, Wine Spectator

Score: 88 Robert Parker, Bordeaux Book (4), December 2003

Score: 86/87+ Robert Parker, Wine Advocate (128), April 2000

Consistently Bordeaux's best "second" wine, a star in its own right. This is a very open, blackcurrant fruit wine with elegance and harmony and good weight on the palate with quite a sweet, oaky finish. FV15.5.

Score: 15.5 Farr Vintners, June 1999

A blend of 91.3% Cabernet Sauvignon and 8.7% Merlot with just under 14% natural alcohol, the 2009 Latour is basically a clone of the super 2003, only more structured and potentially more massive and long lived. An elixir of momentous proportions, it boasts a dense purple color as well as an extraordinarily flamboyant bouquet of black fruits, graphite, crushed rocks, subtle oak and a notion of wet steel. It hits the palate with a thundering concoction of thick, juicy blue and black fruits, lead pencil shavings and a chalky minerality. Full-bodied, but very fresh with a finish that lasts over a minute, this is one of the most remarkable young wines I have ever tasted. Will it last one-hundred years? No doubt about it. Can it be drunk in a decade? For sure. Proprietor Francois Pinault and his director, Frederic Engerer, have pulled out all the stops to produce one of the most monumental Latour’s ever made.

Score: 100

Robert Parker, Wine Advocate 01 March 2012

The 2009 Latour has off the charts concentration in addition to the highest level of tannin ever measured at the estate. The final blend was somewhat unusual in that it consists of 91.3% Cabernet Sauvignon and 8.7% Merlot, and clocked in at 13.7% alcohol (even higher than the 2003). Possibly a 100-year wine, it boasts an inky/black/purple color as well as an extraordinary perfume of super-intense blue and black fruits, graphite, and a liqueur of rocks-like minerality. Enormously full-bodied yet at the same time incredibly fresh, vibrant, and precise, it coats the mouth, and builds incrementally to skyscraper-like texture, and a whopping finish that lasts over a minute. This remarkable wine reveals a certain accessibility already, yet one senses that it will be even richer, more nuanced, and fuller by the time it is bottled in mid-2011. A monumental wine from a monumental vintage in the Medoc, this is our children's children's children's elixir. (Tasted once.) There is no doubting that Director Frederic Engerer and owner Francois Pinault are thrilled with what they have accomplished at Latour. These three wines are hugely different in price, but all are extraordinary.

Score: 98 - 100

Robert Parker, Wine Advocate 01 April 2010