Additional Wine Notes
Les Forts de Latour is Chateau Latour’s second wine but it doesn’t get overshadowed by the grand vin as easily as some others. Launched in 1966 the wine has been made from the same plot of vines and therefore has its own recognisable style and character. Some argue that it competes with second growth Bordeaux and in some years even the first growths. This may go some way to explaining the prices attached to these wines but at least they’re still, on the whole, cheaper than the grand vin.
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.
Vintage Notes
2005 was an exceptional vintage in Pauillac
2005 was an excellent, long-lived vintage in Bordeaux
Other 2005 Pauillac
2005 Chateau Grand-Puy-Ducasse: £65
2005 Chateau Lynch Bages: £165
Other vintages of Les Forts de Latour
Other wines from Chateau Latour
1971 Chateau Latour: £785
1999 Chateau Latour: £500
2004 Chateau Latour: £575
2007 Chateau Latour: £565
2010 Chateau Latour: £1150
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