Chateau Latour 2015

In 2012, Château Latour became the first — and still the only — First Growth to abandon the en primeur system entirely, releasing wines only when the estate deems them ready. The 2015 arrives now, a decade on, exactly as that philosophy intended.

The fruit originates exclusively from L'Enclos, the 47-hectare walled parcel sitting roughly 300 metres from the Gironde Estuary in Pauillac's southeastern corner. Deep gravel croupes over polychrome clay-slate subsoil — blue, red and grey — concentrate power at the parcel's centre while the estuary's thermal mass compresses diurnal swings, extending hang time and preserving aromatic precision. Horses have worked the soil since 2008 to prevent compaction; L'Enclos is farmed fully biodynamically.

Fruit is sorted at both bunch and berry level, fully de-stemmed, then fermented in temperature-controlled stainless steel vats (parcel-by-parcel, 80 vats ranging 12–164 hL) with approximately three weeks of skin contact. Malolactic fermentation completes in tank before the wine moves to 100% new French oak barriques for 18–24 months in one of the Médoc's only subterranean barrel cellars, dug below the water table. Fined with egg whites before bottling.

Where the 2010 demands decades of patience and the 2016 borders on austere, the 2015 is the most approachable recent grand vin — violet aromatics, sweet black fruit, and chalky rather than iron-hard tannins — yet the structural depth of L'Enclos Cabernet Sauvignon ensures a drinking window stretching to 2055.