Tasting Notes
Vinous – 95
The 2014 Latour is a vintage that I have enjoyed a few times. Now at ten years old, it has a very intense and, for Latour, quite an opulent bouquet that is stylistically more akin to Mouton than Lafite-Rothschild: cigar smoke, black truffles and mint emerge with aeration. The palate is medium-bodied with saturated tannins. This is a multi-layered Pauillac dispensing with some of the strictness it showed in its infancy. Very focused, with traces of tobacco and graphite towards the finish, this is a seriously fine Latour that should age gracefully in bottle. Tasted blind at the Southwold 10-Year-On tasting.
Anticipated maturity: 2026-2057
JancisRobinson.com – 18
Tasted blind. Deep, youthful garnet. Rich dark fruit, fragrant even though it is ripe, suggestion of cigar-box spice. Really fine tannins, beautifully dry but not drying. Extreme elegance. Refined power, the layered, paper-fine tannins still resolving. (JH)
Anticipated maturity: 2028-2048
Robert Parker – 97
The 2014 Latour is one of the very finest wines of a vintage that favored the northern Medoc. Mingling aromas of wild berries and cassis with hints of cigar wrapper, loamy soil, black truffles and classy new oak, it’s full-bodied, rich and concentrated, its broad attack segueing into a deep, tightly wound mid-palate that’s framed by powdery, chalky tannins and bright acids, concluding with a long, mouthwatering finish. This classically balanced, youthfully structured young wine looks set to enjoy prodigious longevity. It’s reminiscent of a modern-day version of a cooler vintage such as 1996, though of course these days maturity is more complete and selection even more rigorous than was the case two decades ago.
Anticipated maturity: 2028-2065
