Chateau Latour (1 Bottle in OWC) 2010
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Robert - Decanter
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James -
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Product Details
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Winemaker Notes
Intense, dark color. Outstanding depth and aromatic purity on the nose. Tightly-wound yet elegant tannins give a powerful wine with a velvety-soft mouthfeel. An exceptional year, this Château Latour demonstrates its pedigree, showing great complexity and perfect balance. A wine for long-cellaring.
Vintage Notes: After a mild and wet autumn, the first months of 2010 were particularly cold and dry. Consequently, bud-break was late and was observed on 10th April, though the ensuing summary weather hastened vegetative growth. The vines were in bloom on 3rd June but cold and wet weather early June led to shot and shattered berries in some zones. Seasonal weather returned during the third week of June. Water stress began to develop at the end of June in some plots in the Enclos and increased in July, further concentrating the berries. The colour-change occurred on 7th August and the grapes continued ripening in optimal conditions until harvest.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2010 Latour is deep garnet in color, and—WOW—it erupts from the glass with powerful crème de cassis, Black Forest cake and blackberry pie scents plus intense sparks of dried roses, cigar boxes, fragrant earth and smoked meats with aniseed and crushed rocks wafts. Full-bodied, concentrated and oh-so-decadent in the mouth, it has a firm, grainy texture and lovely freshness carrying the rich, opulent fruit to an epically long finish. It is incredibly tempting to drink now, but I suspect this hedonic experience isn't a scratch on the mind-blowing, otherworldly secrets this time capsule will have to reveal given another 7-10 years in bottle and continuing over the following fifty years++.
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Decanter
I get the same peony and violet aromatics here as I did in Forts de Latour. This is powerful, muscular, not even getting close to being ready. The tannins crowd in from the mid palate onwards, extremely physical in the way they make their presence felt. Behind them, if you give the wine enough time in the glass, it gives black pepper spice, pencil lead, slate and compressed earth, along with cassis, bilberry and all the tight compact dark-berried fruits you can think of. Don't even consider this for another five years at least. This is a monumental Latour and a flashing signpost for how good this vintage is in Pauillac.
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James Suckling
The aromas of flowers such as roses, violets and lilacs jump from the glass then turn to dark berries such as blueberries and blackberries. It's full-bodied, with velvety tannins and dense and intense with a chocolate, berry and currant character. This is juicy and rich with wood still showing a bit, but it's all coming together wonderfully. Muscular yet toned. Try in 2022.
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Wine Spectator
Unbelievably pure, with distilled cassis and plum fruit that cuts a very precise path, while embers of anise, violet and black cherry confiture form a gorgeous backdrop. A bedrock of graphite structure should help this outlive other 2010s. Powerful, sleek and incredibly long. Not perfect, but very close. Best from 2020 through 2050.
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Wine Enthusiast
Stern, almost severe initially, this great wine takes time to show its immense fruit power. Black currant and blackberry notes are packed into the wine, along with an impressive array of spices from new wood that gives a more exotic element. At the end, though, it has a fine, structured sense of proportion. Obviously for aging over decades, so don't drink before 2022. Cellar Selection.
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At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Chateau Latour started to be highly recognized around the world, thanks to the reconquest of the British market and the development of the wine business in Northern Europe. The aristocracy and other wealthy groups of consumers became very enthusiastic about a few great estates, of which Latour was one. And that was how Thomas Jefferson, ambassador of the United States in France, and future President, discovered this wine in 1787. At that time, a cask of Chateau Latour was already worth twenty times as much as one of ordinary Bordeaux wine.
The reputation of Chateau Latour was consolidated during the 19th century. It was confirmed in 1855, when the government of Napoléon III decided to classify the growths of the Médoc and the Graves for the International Exhibition in Paris: Chateau Latour was classified as a First Growth. The existing chateau was built during this "Golden Age", between 1862 and 1864.