Winemaker Notes
Blend: 92% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Merlot, 1% Petit Verdot
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Ripe and very powerful aromas of black licorice, currants and violets. Full-bodied, dense and flavorful with lots of very new, flashy wood. Sexy and gorgeous. Round and polished tannins. Superb wine for the vintage. Try after 2028.
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Decanter
Latour is an utterly fascinating wine to taste nowadays, as there is little doubt that it is undergoing a profound change - almost certainly due to biodynamics. The 2017 is less monumental and yet no less impactful than previous vintages, and is very much in the frame of recent Latours. They are bravely following where they believe it should be, rather than where the market expects it to be. It opens with hugely vibrant spice followed by powerful, richly concentrated cassis and autumnal fruits that steal up on you. This beautiful wine has great persistency and precision, with real bearing and good Pauillac structure. Those tannins come rushing in until, by the end, you feel their insisting power. The levels of precision are astonishing - the team blind-tasted the berries for three weeks before harvest to track maturity and decide picking dates. There are touches of 100-year-old Petit Verdot in here. 30.3% of the estate's production went into the grand vin. 6.4% press wine. 66 IPT.
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Jeb Dunnuck
A complex, layered, incredibly impressive Latour, the 2017 Château Latour is based on 92.1% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7.8 % Merlot, and a splash of Petite Verdot that spent 16 months in new barrels. It's medium to full-bodied, has a ripe, round, beautifully balanced mouthfeel, classic notes of sweet red and black fruits, tobacco, graphite, and crushed stone, ultra-fine tannins, and a gorgeous finish. It's actually much more accessible than I'd imagined a few years ago, and this beauty clearly offers incredible pleasure today, as well as some classic Latour character. It should continue showing well for another 30+ years if well stored.
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine's tannins are hugely rich and concentrated. They give what is also a fruity wine power, density and shape. Don't forget the fruits though, because they will be a powerhouse of richness as they mature. Drink this wine from 2024.
Cellar Selection -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The just-released 2017 Latour is surprisingly accessible by this estate's standards, offering up expressive aromas of crème de cassis, cigar wrapper, pencil shavings, burning embers and creamy new oak, followed by a medium to full-bodied, rich and layered palate that's fleshy and complete, with lively acids and a long, vanillin-inflected finish.
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
The leader on the Left Bank in number of first growth classified producers within its boundaries, Pauillac has more than any of the other appellations, at three of the five. Chateau Lafite Rothschild and Mouton Rothschild border St. Estephe on its northern end and Chateau Latour is at Pauillac’s southern end, bordering St. Julien.
While the first growths are certainly some of the better producers of the Left Bank, today they often compete with some of the “lower ranked” producers (second, third, fourth, fifth growth) in quality and value. The Left Bank of Bordeaux subscribes to an arguably outdated method of classification that goes back to 1855. The finest chateaux in that year were judged on the basis of reputation and trading price; changes in rank since then have been miniscule at best. Today producers such as Chateau Pontet-Canet, Chateau Grand Puy-Lacoste, Chateau Lynch-Bages, among others (all fifth growth) offer some of the most outstanding wines in all of Bordeaux.
Defining characteristics of fine wines from Pauillac (i.e. Cabernet-based Bordeaux Blends) include inky and juicy blackcurrant, cedar or cigar box and plush or chalky tannins.
Layers of gravel in the Pauillac region are key to its wines’ character and quality. The layers offer excellent drainage in the relatively flat topography of the region allowing water to run off into “jalles” or streams, which subsequently flow off into the Gironde.