Latour 2009

Unmistakable Latour in an exceptional vintage, so you should expect a muscular, sculpted and confident wine that is bursting with Pauillac character, showcasing the brilliance of this clay-gravel location overlooking the Gironde Estuary. Still just emerging from its primary stage but just about ready to drink if you give it long enough in a carafe - although it will be even better with another decade. Think blackberry, bilberry, cassis, charcoal, slate, sage, incense, cigar box, grilled cumin and a ton of black chocolate shavings. 100% new oak for ageing, Penelope Godefroy vineyard director, Frederic Engerer director. Tasted a few times this year, and here I am adding to the two notes that are already on this site, one at 100 points, and one at 98 points.

Tasted blind. Lustrous deep crimson. Sweet yet refined. Recalls juggling or tightrope-walking with its mixture of ripeness and freshness. Dry finish on wonderfully precise sweet fruit. Still very youthful. Clean. Highest average score ever! 19.24 because of five 20/20s. 14%Drink 2022-2050

The perfume of woodland violets and wood smoke leaps out of the glass. There are layers of flavour first blackcurrant, then black cherty and sloe refreshed by the underlying bilberry. The tannins are structured but in no way aggressive allowing the fleshy fruit to show itself to advantage. Drink 2022-2050.

A whisper away from perfection, this is one of the most profound Latours I have ever tasted. It's thick and dense with lashings of new oak. Rich, concentrated and powerful, with the high percentage of Cabernet providing backbone and structure, this is a wine for the long haul with incredible fruit concentration, but smooth tannins. 30+ years.

(91.3% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8.7% Merlot) Black red, huge concentration of black fruits and great purity, wonderfully fragrant nose with wild violets and lifted freshness, great length and perfect texture, totally Latour and all the fruit and vineyard will come out over the years. Drink 2018-45.

Dark and chocolatey with a lot of richness, but also a cool herbal freshness this is a very impressive Medoc wine that's already delicious to drink. Very long, surprisingly supple finish for this château. A perfect wine. Drink or hold. (Horizontal Tasting, London, 2019)

The 2009 Latour has off the charts concentration in addition to the highest level of tannin ever measured at the estate. The final blend was somewhat unusual in that it consists of 91.3% Cabernet Sauvignon and 8.7% Merlot, and clocked in at 13.7% alcohol (even higher than the 2003). Possibly a 100-year wine, it boasts an inky/black/purple color as well as an extraordinary perfume of super-intense blue and black fruits, graphite, and a liqueur of rocks-like minerality. Enormously full-bodied yet at the same time incredibly fresh, vibrant, and precise, it coats the mouth, and builds incrementally to skyscraper-like texture, and a whopping finish that lasts over a minute. This remarkable wine reveals a certain accessibility already, yet one senses that it will be even richer, more nuanced, and fuller by the time it is bottled in mid-2011. A monumental wine from a monumental vintage in the Medoc, this is our children's children's children's elixir. (Tasted once.)There is no doubting that Director Frederic Engerer and owner Francois Pinault are thrilled with what they have accomplished at Latour. These three wines are hugely different in price, but all are extraordinary.

Tasted at the château. Frédéric Engerer told me that the 2009 had a comparatively long fermentation of up to two weeks. It delivers a show-stopping bouquet: classic seductive Pauillac with ebullient black fruits infused with graphite, crushed stone, pencil box, cedar and a touch of mint. With aeration there is a suggestion of something more exotic...wild honey or apricot blossom. The palate is full-bodied with supple but powerful tannins, beautifully integrated oak, perhaps a little edgier thanks to its redoubtable tannic finish. Majestic. Tasted November 2011.

Tasted at the château. Very deep purple colour. The nose is very well defined with scents of small blackberry, boysenberry, cold granite and just a hint of pencil lead. Great clarity and expression here. This is a majestic Latour, utterly pure, wonderful minerality showing through, very fine tannins and incredible poise. Blackberry, touches of briary, coiled up energy towards the finish, utterly focused with that tannins leaving an off-dry finish with bewitching persistency. There is paradoxically weight and weightlessness...sorry to be so cryptic, but that is how it is! A monumental Latour that constitutes one of the greatest wines of the vintage. Tasted March 2010.

This is incredibly floral on the nose, with violet and lilac as well as dark and ripe raspberry and blueberry. Full-bodied, with a dense and incredibly rich palate yet held back and in reserve. Such precision and beauty. It lasts for minutes on the palate. This reminds me of the 1990, but better made and better raised. It is really the style of Latour, where the tannins grab you at the end. This will most likely be a perfect wine.

Classic Pauillac power and finesse, packed with brambled fruits, hedgerow earthiness, exuberant while being controlled and carefully delivered. This has shoulders and backbone, and is impossible to ignore. Still in its primary phase so zero need to rush, but you are going to get more joy from this 2009 than you will with the 2010 vintage for at least the next five years. Penelope Godefroy vineyard director at the time, 100% new oak. Although they had not begun conversion at this point, things were moving in that direction - horses had been reintroduced within the vineyard as of 2008, and all chemical weedkillers had been stopped in the 1990s. The first biodynamic experiments took place in this vintage, but just over 3ha of vines. Still being sold En Primeur at the time, so relatively widely available.

Very deep and glowing crimson. Very rich and sweet ink on the nose. Wonderfully gorgeous and lush on the front palate. Then lots of heat and richness. Amazing power of fruit on the mid palate gives way to extremely pronounced tannins. Transparent, mellifluous, spicy. Violets, says Engerer. Dry Taylors port? Latour backbone. Glossy ripe fruit. Candied violets. Maybe in 03 we went overboard. Enormous energy. Very impressive. Date tasted 31st March 2010. Drink 2022-2045.