1971 | Château Latour | Pauillac (Magnum)

A dense, blackberry, graphite and tobacco nose that is unapologetically old school, rough-hewn but clearly demonstrating more vigor than many of its peers.

Reviews:

• Wine Advocate: Tasted blind from magnum at the chateau, this is certainly the best bottle I have had of the ’71, generally agreed to be the finest Left Bank of an average vintage. At first, it is a little subdued on the nose but unfurls in the glass to reveal notes of graphite, tobacco and liquorice. In fact, leaving it in my glass it offers an intriguing cola note. The palate is tannic and vibrant, dry and a little austere at first by mellowing with aeration with black pepper, graphite and crushed stone towards the finish. Linear and correct, this is an upstanding classic Latour that you will loathe if you dislike traditional Bordeaux.

• John Gilman: As I mentioned above, the 1971 vintage of Latour was in that first small cache of the estate’s wines that I bought back in the mid-1980s, and I have searched out and drunk this wine with great regularity up until only a couple of years ago, when the wine market woke up to its excellence and prices started to move up rather dramatically. It still looks like a stunning value when one considers that the still very backward 2005 was released ex-cellar for 670 euros a bottle, and only a few years back, this gorgeous wine could still be found around $200 a bottle. The wine is classic Latour, offering up a black fruity bouquet of dark berries, cassis, cigar ash, walnuts, gravelly soil tones, a nice touch of meatiness and a plenty smoky topnote. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and now wide open and fully mature, with a fine core, lovely soil signature, melting, suave tannins and lovely length and grip on the complex finish. The 1971 Latour is now fully mature, but probably will cruise along on its impeccable balance for at least another thirty years!

Producer Information

Château Latour is one of Bordeaux's – and the world's – most famous wine producers. It is situated in the southeast corner of the Pauillac commune on the border of Saint-Julien, in the Médoc region. Rated as a First Growth in the 1855 Bordeaux Classification, it has become one of the most sought-after and expensive wine producers on the planet, and produces powerfully structured Cabernet Sauvignon-dominant wines capable of lasting many decades. The site has been occupied since 1331, with a fort and garrison to guard the estuary. Several smallholdings began to grow vines, and wine from the site gained recognition from Montaigne as early as the 16th Century. The original tower no longer exists; the famous tower featured on the label was designed as a pigeon roost and built around 1620. Latour's development as a single property came with the beginning of a long unbroken period of connected family ownership, based around the de Ségur name, also associated with Mouton and Calon-Ségur. This began in 1670 and lasted 290 years although, after the French Revolution, Latour was divided up and not fully reunited until 1841. The château has been owned by French billionaire François Pinault since 1993 and falls under the umbrella of his holding company, Groupe Artemis. Other notable Artemis possessions include the likes of Burgundy's Le Clos de Tart (in Morey-Saint-Denis) and Domaine d'Eugénie (in Vosne-Romanée), Château-Grillet in Condrieu, and Napa Valley's Araujo Estate. The Latour estate courted controversy in 2012 when it announced – through long-time director Frédéric Engerer – that it would no longer take part in Bordeaux's En Primeur pre-release sales campaign (an annual installment for nearly all the major names in the region). Since 2012, the estate has shown no signs of going back on this decision.

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