1996 Château Latour, Pauillac, Bordeaux

Beautifully ornate nose with equal parts stalk, leaf, herb and black fruit. Freshly balanced palate with delicacy and refreshment, and surprising elegance for Pauillac from a big vintage. Wonderful complexity on the finish, earthy and open and meaty on the length.

Drink 2015 - 2035

A blend of 78% Cabernet Sauvignon, 17% Merlot and 5% Cabernet Franc.

This highly anticipated bottle was a bit of a disappointment. One of the two bottles was oxidised, and the other seemed a bit more mature than I would have hoped, with a meaty, savoury note to the black fruit, accented with leather and smoke. The grapes were picked from 17th September to 2nd October, and slightly more than 50% of the fruit was used in the grand vin.

Drink 2022 - 2042

The 1996 Latour is a wine that I often find overrated and did not achieve everything that might have been possible in this favourable growing season. That said, this might well be the best of around two dozen bottles I have encountered over the years. As usual, the 1996 is decidedly austere at first, standoffish, looks down its nose at you. Yet it coalesces with time and develops engaging cedar-scented black fruit tinged with pencil box and a touch of iris with time.

The palate again) is a little muted at first but it soon found its voice and evolved very fine tannin allied with a crisp line of acidity. It is not quite as demonstrative as it was even just a couple of years ago, gained some detail and perhaps it will continue to meliorate. Very fine, very fine indeed - but not a patch of say, the Château Margaux or perhaps even Léoville Las Cases.

Drink 2018 - 2040

This was a wine that was very hyped and always excellent. But now it shows the reality of the wet and cold vintage. Lots of basil leaf, lemon grass, and sage aromas with currant undertones. Medium body, fine tannins and a fresh finish. Now at its best.

Drink up

From my cellar, the 1996 Latour is still a very youthful, tightly wound wine, unfurling in the glass with notions of blackcurrants, loamy soil, cigar wrapper and English walnuts. Medium to full-bodied, deep and concentrated, it’s built around ripe, increasingly melting tannins and a bright spine of acidity, concluding with a long, penetrating finish. Given this Latour’s ruby-black hue and impeccable structure, it still has a long future ahead. Today, it really begins to expatiate after four hours in a decanter.

Drink 2025 - 2065

56% of overall production in the first wine. 1% Petit Verdot completes the blend. Last released in 2014 as an ex-château wine.

Inky black even at 25 years old. It is a hugely impressive wine, with plenty of chewy tannins still in play and ripples of cassis, bilberry and blackberry fruits set against olive paste, charcoal and eucalyptus. Things have softened around the edges, no question, this is still full of life with decades ahead of it, but this is a great moment to start enjoying its promise. Textbook Latour in many ways, for its austerity and power, and its serious character that is underlaid by concentrated pleasure showcasing ‘the gift of sub-gravel clays’.

Drink 2023 - 2040

A hot, dry August produced very concentrated grapes in 1996. However, it turned a bit rainy from mid-September through early October, making the vintage less consistent on the Right Bank and Graves. But as the weather turned glorious from early October, it was an amazing year for later-harvested Cabernet in the Médoc. There was new ownership at Latour, and a new vat room was completed just before the harvest this year.

The 1996 Latour is medium to deep garnet in colour with a profound earthy, meaty, gamey nose with hints of blueberry preserves, crème de cassis and pencil shavings. The palate is full-bodied, concentrated and packed with muscular fruit, with a firm, ripe, grainy backbone and epically long finish. Showing much more youthfully than the 2000 tasted on the same day and still possessing bags of youthful fruit in the mid-palate, this beauty will go on and on!

Drink 2025 - 2065