Chateau Latour Pauillac de Latour 2019

Robert ParkerThe 2019 Le Pauillac de Château Latour is another impressive rendition of this bottling from Latour. Offering up notes of sweet berry fruit, plums, spices and pencil shavings, it’s medium to full-bodied, rich and fleshy, with a ripe core of fruit, lively acids and powdery tannins. This year, it includes some declassified lots from Les Forts de Latour. I'm sure it will show even better when it's released in a few years.

Under CEO Frédéric Engerer and technical director Hélène Génin, unremitting perfectionism and attention to detail is the order of the day at Château Latour, so it's no surprise that this great estate has delivered some of the finest wines of the vintage in Bordeaux. Certified organic since 2018, most of Latour's historic "Enclos" is being farmed biodynamically these days, and its entirety is now cultivated by horse to minimize soil compaction and preserve intact as many old vines as possible. But the objective, above all, rather than subscribing to any particular theoretical approach, is to treat the vineyard holistically, as a system, within and with nature rather than against it. Winemaking is precise but traditional, with macerations in stainless steel followed by maturation in barrel with rackings every three months and one fining with egg whites. Great attention is paid to the choice of barrels: each lot is tasted, and its style defined, before it's barreled down in cooperage adapted to that style. But if these methods realize the potential of this great site, what makes Latour's site so great? After all, this isn't the only vineyard to occupy the quaternary gravel terrace that makes its appearance along the banks of the Gironde. When I posed this question, Hélène Génin's response was to point to Latour's lenses of blue clay interfingered with and underlying those gravels. It's these pockets of clay in just the right places, Génin contends, that contain the secret to the wine's elegantly muscular power and immense longevity.