2012 Château
Latour

BY NEAL MARTIN | APRIL 06, 2020In
retrospect, the decision of Château Latour to cease releasing their new vintage
onto the Place de Bordeaux following the en
primeur campaign was a bit like Brexit. That sense of forsaking tradition,
going it alone and playing by your own rules... not that I would ever compare CEO
Frédéric Engerer with Nigel Farage! We must wait to see the results of Brexit,
but Latour’s decision was made following the 2011 vintage, so there is almost a
decade to gauge success. To be honest, it is difficult to measure. If the
yardstick is actual sales, then one should examine not the take-up from
négociants, which is a given, but rather the percentage that feeds through to
final consumers via merchants, and that is tricky to assess accurately. The
fact that other Bordeaux châteaux have not followed Latour’s lead gives some
indication of their sentiment, though
some have gone halfway and now hold back more of their production, a policy
that I have argued is unfair to potential buyers because of its opaqueness. At
least with Latour you know where you stand, and the merchants’ reception of previous
late releases has been positive.<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1586180455891-latour_tower_triplicate.jpg"> 

Unfortunately,
I missed a tasting in London where Engerer showcased forthcoming late releases of
Château Latour, Les Forts de Latour and Pauillac de Latour – ironically,
because I was in Bordeaux. Though I do not have recent notes for the 2014 Les
Forts de Latour and 2015 Pauillac de Latour, I did taste the 2012 Château
Latour in December. What makes this bottle different is that it is cleaved from
a private vertical tasting of the last 20 vintages and was one that I managed
to identify correctly. Indeed, the challenge of identifying recent vintages
blind is testament to Latour’s consistency. The 2012 is a vintage that I praised
highly four years ago when, again, I assessed it blind, that time against its
peers. With around 70% of production apparently set to be released on March 18 through
selected Bordeaux négociants, at time of writing I do not know the price,
though they must surely have wished for a more favorable environment than one
with import taxes in the United States and the global economic repercussions of
coronavirus. Therein lies one of the risks in this strategy: You can never
predict the future.

The 2012 Latour has a potent bouquet of blackberry,
graphite and distinctive tertiary notes [instead of more marine scents observed
four years earlier]. Initially, the palate is slightly disjointed on the entry
and displays a subtle herbal quality, plus hints of pencil shavings. The 2012 demands
a few minutes to really coalesce and achieve the precision and pixelation that have
been the hallmark of this Grand Vin in its youth. Layers of black fruit coat
the mouth, and a bitter edge lends tension, particularly toward the very
persistent finish. Though its release implies, and the rhetoric from the
château indicates, that it is ready to drink, if you want my advice, cellar the
2012 for another five or six years to witness it in full flight. It has always
been a candidate for wine of the vintage... just have a bit of patience. 96/Drink
2027-2055.

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