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
2012 was a good vintage in Pauillac
2012 was a good but short-lived vintage in Bordeaux
Other 2012 Pauillac
2012 L’Echo de Lynch Bages: £55
2012 Chateau Batailley: £68
2012 Chateau Pontet Canet: £78
2012 Chateau Duhart-Milon: £81
2012 Chateau Pichon Baron: £130
2012 Chateau Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande: £135
2012 Les Carruades de Lafite: £400
2012 Chateau Lafite Rothschild: £530
Other vintages of Les Forts de Latour
Other wines from Chateau Latour
2000 Chateau Latour: £815
2003 Chateau Latour: £655
2004 Chateau Latour: £575
2005 Chateau Latour: £745
2007 Chateau Latour: £450
2009 Chateau Latour: £910
2010 Chateau Latour: £1150
2015 Le Pauillac de Latour: £76
Our rating –