Château Latour 2019 Premier Grand Cru Classé Pauillac Magnum - OWC1

Jeb Dunnuck
100 punten
Looking at the Grand Vin, the 2019 Château Latour is another perfect wine in the vintage and is as prodigious as they come. Revealing a deep purple hue, it displays a powerful and complex array of pure Pauillac cassis-like fruit as well as lead pencil, graphite, chalky minerality, truffle, and espresso and shows the vintage’s more elegant style perfectly, with nothing out of place. It is medium to full-bodied, with ripe, sweet tannins, but it still has that classic Latour regalness, concentration, structure, and class, with just a hint of its normal youthful austerity. This flawless balanced, structured, insanely good Latour will be drinkable in just 7-8 years but evolve for 40-50 years in cold cellars. Hats off to the team of technical director Hélène Génin and CEO Frédéric Engerer.

Falstaff
100 punten
Dark ruby, opaque core, purple reflections, subtle brightening on the edge. Delicate floral nuances of candied violets, fresh blackberry confit, fine herbal savouriness, a hint of old wood, candied orange zest. Juicy, fruit texture, ripe cherries and plums, firm tannins, finely structured, pleasant nougat note in the finish. Mineral and fresh, salty finish, already shows great length, will only benefit from further bottle ageing; great future. (2030-2070).

Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
99+ punten
The 2019 Latour is a profound wine in the making, and it will surely emerge as one of the most long-lived wines of the vintage, as well as one of the greatest. Unwinding in the glass with scents of rich cassis fruit, English walnuts, cigar wrapper, black truffle, loamy soil and violets, it’s full-bodied, layered and muscular, with huge depth at the core, ripe tannins and lively acids, concluding with a long, seemingly interminable finish. Checking in at 14.1% alcohol, this prodigious Latour will require two decades to hit its stride, but it will be more than worth the wait.

Decanter
98-100 punten
A seductive sweetness to the fruit on the attack, this waits a heartbeat then explodes out of the glass, overflowing with raspberry, redcurrants, black cherries, cassis and iris flowers. A silky confident and extremely well-controlled Latour where you can feel the precision and the inching forward through the palate of the different elements. It feels both extremely delicate at one level, yet expansive and concentrated, particularly from the mid palate onwards with a grip of tannins that lifts, expands and keeps on going. Those clay-gravel soils have meant there is not a hint of fig or prune, instead it is rich and fresh and very juicy. I love how Latour has re-framed itself in recent years with the move to biodynamics and yet shown that a truly great estate can evolve without losing its brilliance. 100% new oak, tannin count 78IPT, 36% of overall production in the first wine. 98-100.

Jane Anson (Inside Bordeaux)
99 punten
By turns powerful and extremely subtle, the 2019 vintage at Latour highlights the resculpting and evolution of this 1st Growth over the past decade. Nuanced aromatics of peony, gunsmoke and campfire. Things take their time in the glass, with waves of charcoal, slate and black truffle weaving through supple blackcurrant, raspberry and mulberry fruits. Sappy acidities let light through to the muscular, take-no-prisoners, tannins. Clever winemaking, expansive yet concentrated, with hidden power and depths that will need a good decade before opening up and yet already seductive. Delivers on it En Primeur promise. 36% of overall production. 100% new oak. Overall yield of just under 45hl/h, unusual as the average yield at Latour is closer to 35hl/h, largely due to old vines and the powerful clay that sits under the gravel here.

Jancis Robinson
18+/20 punten
Tasted blind. Some evolution at the rim. Meaty and treacly on the nose. Fresh, but not that concentrated. And the tannin is not too heavy. Long, sweet and impressive. Just a little unmarried and jagged for now. A little inky.