Winemaker Notes
The color is very dark, deep, purple. The nose is intense with notes of blackcurrant, black cherry and fresh fruit followed by a touch of licorice and spices. The palate is greedy, powerful, juicy and fleshy, with coated and velvety tannins. The finish is fresh, fruity and persistent.
Blend: 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 10% Petit Verdot
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Another beautiful Pessac from 2020, the 2020 Château Latour-Martillac has a textbook bouquet of smoky red and black fruits, spring flowers, truffly earth, and smoked tobacco. With a lush, round, medium to full-bodied mouthfeel, it has ripe tannins, some classic Graves sexiness, and a great finish. It's going to benefit from 5-6 years of bottle age and keep for 15-20 years.
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James Suckling
Pristine dark berries with chocolate, black licorice, nut shell and graphite. Some wet stones, too. Full and muscular with an array of well-grained, meaty tannins that unfold seamlessly throughout the bold, dark-fruited palate. So much going on here. Long length with a creamy, chocolaty finish. Try after 2026.
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Vinous
The 2020 Latour-Martillac has an impressive, quite engaging bouquet with blackberry, incense, graphite and faith touches of black olive. This is very harmonious and well defined. The palate is medium-bodied with fine-grain tannins, very well balanced, quite saline with a poised and quite persistent finish. Quintessentially Pessac-Leognan, this has a bright future ahead. -Neal Martin
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Wine Enthusiast
This Graves Grand Cru Classe has produced an elegantly rich wine. Still very young, its powerful tannins mask the black fruits and acidity. As the wine matures, fruit and richness will come forward. The wine is worth aging for many years.
Cellar Selection -
Decanter
Crunchy with real bite, this is both juicy and ripe but also clean and crisp with quite a narrow, tense core of fruit and freshness. It’s well worked, great texture and push. Perhaps lacking a bit in complexity or nuance, still quite streamlined and focused - less expansive and expressive at this point but good intensity and structure. Powdery tannins, crushed stone texture.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Complex aromas of cherries, raspberries, rose petals, bay leaf and spices introduce the 2020 Latour Martillac, a medium to full-bodied, fleshy, lively wine with good depth and excellent balance. It represents an improvement on the 2019.
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Wine Spectator
Juicy and compact, with a solid core of dark currant and blackberry fruit waiting to unfurl, while sweet tobacco, tar and bittersweet cocoa notes flash around. Reveals a light cedary thread on the finish. Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot. Drink now through 2033.
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.
Recognized for its superior reds as well as whites, Pessac-Léognan on the Left Bank claims classified growths for both—making it quite unique in comparison to its neighboring Médoc properties.
Pessac’s Chateau Haut-Brion, the only first growth located outside of the Médoc, is said to have been the first to conceptualize fine red wine in Bordeaux back in the late 1600s. The estate, along with its high-esteemed neighbors, La Mission Haut-Brion, Les Carmes Haut-Brion, Pique-Caillou and Chateau Pape-Clément are today all but enveloped by the city of Bordeaux. The rest of the vineyards of Pessac-Léognan are in clearings of heavily forested area or abutting dense suburbs.
Arid sand and gravel on top of clay and limestone make the area unique and conducive to growing Sémillon and Sauvignon blanc as well as the grapes in the usual Left Bank red recipe: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and miniscule percentages of Petit Verdot and Malbec.
The best reds will show great force and finesse with inky blue and black fruit, mushroom, forest, tobacco, iodine and a smooth and intriguing texture.
Its best whites show complexity, longevity and no lack of exotic twists on citrus, tropical and stone fruit with pronounced floral and spice characteristics.