Louis Latour Echezeaux Grand Cru

When Jean Latour established the house in 1797 — his family already three generations into vine ownership on the Côte d'Or — the ambition was to vinify Burgundy's greatest terroirs with the same rigour applied to their own Corton holdings. Échezeaux Grand Cru sits on the southern edge of the Vosne-Romanée Grand Cru belt, its soils a shallow mix of brown limestone and iron-rich clay over Bajocian bedrock, the elevation and easterly aspect delivering a longer, cooler ripening arc than the more sheltered Vougeot floor below.

The fruit is 100% hand-harvested, fully destemmed and crushed, then fermented in Louis Latour's large open wooden vats at the Corton Grancey Cuverie with manual pigeage over approximately 14 days; gravity alone moves the wine throughout the five-level hillside facility built in 1832. Aging proceeds in 100% new French oak pièces (228 L), medium toast, 10–12 months — barrels coopered in-house from French oak air-dried 24–36 months. Before bottling, the wine undergoes flash pasteurisation (approx. 72°C, 2–3 seconds), the house's openly acknowledged and categorically unique practice among major Burgundy producers, which achieves microbiological stability and eliminates fining without extended cellar intervention.

The 2017 vintage across the Côte de Nuits delivered concentrated, structurally precise reds from a warm, early harvest — wines with taut fruit and firm backbone that reward patience. Drink 2024–2032.