2014 Château Latour

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.

- Neal Martin (02/2024)

This has aromas of black fruit, olives, wet earth, dried lavender, cloves and bark. Bitter chocolate and walnuts, too. It’s medium-to full-bodied with firm, tight-grained tannins. Structured, with great freshness and length. Cedar notes on the lighter mid-palate. Still a little tight and chewy. Try from 2024. (03/2022)

The 2014 Château Latour is still a baby and relatively closed and backward, offering darker, meaty black fruits, tobacco, truffly earth, and graphite on the nose. It's much more dense and structured than I would have imagined from tasting on release and offers full-bodied richness, a beautiful mid-palate, fabulous overall balance, and no shortage of tannins on the finish. This vintage was terrific for the Médoc, particularly the northern Médoc, and this beauty warrants another 7-8 years of bottle age, after which I suspect it will have well over 3 decades of overall longevity. The blend is 89.9% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9.2% Merlot, and the rest Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot that hit 12.8% alcohol. (08/2022)

Deep garnet-brick in color, the 2014 Latour is a tad broody and closed to start, slowly unfurling to reveal notes of blackcurrant jelly, menthol, cedar chest, and cumin seed followed by hints of dried lavender and fertile loam. The medium-bodied palate is tightly wound, with minerally nuances framed by firm, grainy tannins and seamless freshness, finishing long and layered. (03/2024)

This shows terrific cut and drive from the start, with mouthwatering acidity and a chiseled graphite note leading the way, backed by a core of pure cassis and blackberry preserves. Licorice snap and sweet tobacco details flitter through the finish, where the graphite edge reemerges and sails on and on. Best from 2022 through 2040. 7,632 cases made.

- J.M.

The 2014 Latour is one of the very finest wines of a vintage that favored the northern Médoc. 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.

- William Kelley (03/2022)