Louis Latour Cote de Nuits-Villages (375 ml)

Founded in 1797 by Jean Latour — a third-generation winegrower whose family had tended Côte d'Or vines since 1731 — Maison Louis Latour built its Corton Grancey cuverie in 1832 as France's first purpose-built gravity-flow winery, a philosophy that still governs every red wine produced today. Côte de Nuits-Villages occupies the northern and southern bookends of the Côte de Nuits, where clay-dominant soils over limestone bedrock at modest elevations produce Pinot Noir with firmer structure and darker fruit character than the lighter gravel-over-limestone of the Côte de Beaune villages to the south.

The wine is 100% hand-harvested Pinot Noir, fully destemmed and crushed, then fermented in large open wooden vats for approximately 14 days with manual pigeage and gravity-only transport throughout — no pumping at any stage. Aging follows in French oak at 15–35% new, medium toast, 10–12 months, with barrels coopered in-house from air-dried French oak staves. The house's most openly debated signature: all reds are flash-pasteurised at approximately 72°C for 2–3 seconds before bottling, eliminating fining entirely while ensuring microbiological stability — a practice no other major Burgundy négociant openly acknowledges. In 2021, a cool, selective growing season across the Côte de Nuits delivered wines of genuine freshness and tensile structure, with drinking windows extending comfortably through the late 2020s.