Château Latour 2000

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Château Latour decided to release the Grand Vin de Château Latour 2000 and Les Forts de Latour 2009 onto the market.

 For the last three years we have been selecting wines from our cellars that we think will best satisfy our clients and connoisseurs of the Estate. 

This year we have decided to offer the Grand Vin de Château Latour 2000 and Les Forts de Latour 2009.

Château Latour 2000 is a giant of a wine that evolves slowly. After 16 years of ageing, this wine is subtle, elegant and concentrated, yet is just starting to open up and reveal its full complexity. With excellent cellaring potential, this wine lives up to the expectations it raised in its infancy. For this release, we are offering the totality of stock still available at the Estate. 

2009 was a wonderfully hot and sunny year which produced wines with a magical charm and impressive structure. Forts de Latour 2009 is a fleshy, elegant and complex wine with an incredible expression of ripe fruits. Having reached its first stage of maturity, this wine can already be thoroughly enjoyed whilst retaining excellent cellaring possibilities. 

These two wines will be released onto the market at the end of March exclusively via a selection of wine merchants from La Place de Bordeaux. They will join the Pauillac de Château Latour 2010 which was released at the beginning of the year.

The chateau makes three different wines. The so-called grand vin, that is Château Latour itself, a second wine called Les Forts de Latour and a third wine simply called Pauillac. The grand vin comes from the original part of the vineyards, called the Enclos. This is the most prestigious part of the vineyard where the vines have a fine view of the Gironde estuary. The tradition in Bordeaux says that vines that overlook the water make the best wine. The proximity to the estuary actually gives a slightly higher temperature, helping the grapes to good maturity. The Enclos is around 45 hectares out of a total of 88 for the whole estate.

The grape varieties are 75 % Cabernet Sauvignon, 23 % Merlot, 1 % Cabernet Franc and 1 % of Petit Verdot. The planting density is high, 10,000 vines per hectare. Every year the chateau’s viticulturist replaces a certain number of dead vines. These young vines are marked and treated separately. They are harvested separately and they are not used in the grand vin until they are at least 10 years old.

The Enclos is under conversion to organic farming since 2015. It takes three years to be certified so it means that we will see the first organic Château Latour in 2018. Only copper and sulfur, mixed with different plant infusions, are used to fight diseases in the vineyard. Instead of insecticides they use sexual confusion. Only organic fertilizers are used when needed and no herbicides.

The barrel aging starts in December. Château Latour is put in 100 % new oak from the Allier and Nièvre forest in the central part of France. The chateau works with 11 different coopers. This is important to the winemaker as the coopers all have different styles.

The wine spends six months in the first year cellar where it will also undergo the malolactic fermentation. The barrels are tasted regularly and the winemaker decides the blend for the grand vin, the second wine and the third wine. He decides if the press wine should be included or not. The wine is then moved to the huge and magnificent second-year cellar where it will spend 10-13 months, so in total around 22 months of aging before it is bottled. 2014 was bottled in June this year. During the barrel aging the wine is racked and topped up regularly, every 3 months. At the end, the wine is fined traditionally with egg whites, 5-6 whites per barrel.

Château Latour is often a textbook example of a Cabernet Sauvignon. No wonder, as often almost 90 % of the wine is made from this grape. It is a powerful wine in its youth, with aromas of cedar wood and black fruit, made even more powerful with the aging in 100 % new oak barrels. It is packed with fruit and tannins and it stays young for at least 10 years. This is a wine you really should wait for, say 10-15 year or longer. It needs time to show what it is capable of.