Château de la Tour Clos-Vougeot Vieilles Vignes 1985-2016
BY STEPHEN TANZER |
Of the still-ticking red Burgundies from the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s that I’ve been lucky enough to taste during my life as a wine lover, a disproportionate number have come from the storied Clos de Vougeot. That’s partly due to simple arithmetic: the Clos, originally created in the 12th century by the Cistercian monks of the Abbaye de Citeaux, who had a knack for sniffing out the best sites for viticulture, is by far the largest grand cru in the Côte de Nuits, encompassing nearly 51 hectares, or about 125 acres, surrounded by about two miles of wall. While it remained in the hands of the church until the French Revolution, the Clos de Vougeot is now divided into well over a hundred parcels with more than 80 owners—a true microcosm of Burgundy. Additional wines have always been offered by numerous négociants; in fact, these merchant firms, some of them now extinct, dominated production of Clos Vougeot for the first three-quarters of the 20th century.
Clos de Vougeot has always been known, at least until the onset of global warming in the 1980s, for producing dense, powerful wines that were austere in their youth, with the tannic structure that demanded—and supported—extended aging. While this quality often made the wines tough to warm to in the early going, it obviously helps to explain why so many of these bottles enjoyed half-century-plus lifespans.
The Château de la Tour
Château de la Tour’s Prime Vineyards in the Clos
With its 5.48 hectares of vines, Château de la Tour is the largest landowner in Clos de Vougeot. (Incidentally, Clos de Vougeot is the name of the cru, while most of its wines are labeled Clos Vougeot or, as in the case of Château de la Tour, Clos-Vougeot.) Château de la Tour is also the only owner that produces their Clos Vougeot within the actual walls of the Clos (including the château and grounds, Château de la Tour actually owns six hectares of surface). It has been in the hands of the Labet family and their ancestors since 1889, making it one of the oldest ownerships in the Clos.
The château itself, which dates back to 1890, is the “other” edifice in the Clos, situated along the northern wall of the Clos, roughly in the middle of the slope. It enjoys a striking view of the considerably larger Château de Clos Vougeot, the famous monastic cellar built in the 12th and 16th centuries in the slightly higher northwest corner of Clos de Vougeot that is now the headquarters of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin.
The main holding of the Château de la Tour is a large parcel that extends south from the chateau and then opens out to the west (toward the top of the Clos) and east (toward the Route Nationale at the bottom) in the center of the Clos (think of a T, or two contiguous rectangles). The estate also owns a prime parcel called Treize Ouvrées at the top of the Clos, just to the south of the Château de Clos Vougeot and close to Grands-Echézeaux, as well as two skinny strips of land (one just five vine rows wide and the other six) on either side of the Domaine Jean Grivot parcel at the bottom of the cru, on heavier soil extending up from the Route Nationale.
The Château de la Tour in autumn, with the historic Château de Clos Vougeot in the background
