1996 Chateau Latour Pauillac Premier Cru

Producer Notes

Chateau Latour produces the biggest and longest lived wines of any of the first growths of the Medoc.
The wines are 75-80% cabernet sauvignon and the best vintages will be absolutely fine after 100 years (particularly, we suspect, the rather odd 1964, which may well have suffered from an excess of chapitalisation as some vintages of the period do). Latour has never had an off-decade, and the wine is also probably the most reliable of all the first growths across all vintages, great and poor.
The estate also produces two ‘second’ wines: Les Forts de Latour, which is produced in similar quanitites to the grand vin, and ‘Pauillac de Latour’, which confusingly just says ‘Pauillac’ in large letters on the label, making it appear to be a generic wine from the appellation.
Some people clearly drink Chateau Latour only a few years old but such people clearly have higher concentration of currency than taste buds.