2000 Les Forts de Latour

"In 2000 we had great raw material, so we were not afraid to extract a lot," said manager Frederic Engerer. "But in 2002 we had to be very careful. It was especially important to eliminate all the pieces of dead stems on our sorting tables, especially after the destemming. As it turned out, there was a very small proportion of pips [grape seeds, which can give wine a bitter quality when they are crushed] this year so perhaps we could have extracted more." There will be only 105,000 bottles of 2002 Latour, compared to 165,000 from the 2001 vintage. I asked Engerer to compare the young 2002 to the estate's 2000. "The big difference is in aromatic complexity. The 2000 is more opulent, more sympathique The 2002 never ripened as completely, and yet the wine has density and concentration similar to that of the 2000."

Latour installed a new sorting table in the winery in time for the 2001 harvest and brought in its grapes in the smaller cagettes (Previously the sorting table was in the vines, where, according to estate manager Frederic Engerer, "the work was less serious.") The merlot was less dense and structured in 2001, said Engerer; as a result, the young 2001 blend is higher in pH and lower in acidity than the 2000. As the grapes were not as strong, the new vintage called for gentler handling than that of 2000, which Engerer told me "was more forgiving of overextraction." The past trio of vintages has brought exciting quality at Latour, as a host of small improvements have been made here in recent years. "Even as recently as 1996, we did no leaf-pulling," noted Engerer. "There was also less rigorous crop thinning; plus, today we sort before and after the destemming." For the first time, Latour vinified without any stems in 2001. "Yes, the tannins are tight and austere, but they're not hard like those in 1988 and 1986," said Engerer.

Latour resembled a construction site this spring, as a major renovation project was in full swing. As this is a classic Bordeaux estate, with the chateau and winemaking facility located in the center of the vines, the only way to expand the physical plant was to dig down a level. "We're redoing the vat room, the bottling line, everything," said estate manager Frederic Engerer. "All the changes are aimed at allowing us to vinify smaller lots and to make wine more efficiently." Latour has an outstanding 2000 vintage in the works, a wine that, in the words of Engerer, "will please English nostalgics who like the austere stuff but which also has the smooth structure and polished tannins that today market obviously appreciates." In fact, this is a wine with an unusual balance for the vintage: the pH of 3.7 is normal, but the acidity level (4.1 grams per liter) was the highest figure I heard during my spring tour of the Bordeaux region. The old cabernet vines reached 12+% potential alcohol, which is quite rare, and polyphenol levels were very high. "We considered using 6% press wine until two weeks ago, but the blend we decided on has just 3% [the '99, in comparison, includes 15%]. We already had a structured, muscular wine, and we risked getting a dryness at the end if we included more press wine." Among the other changes instituted by Engerer since he took over direction of Latour in 1999 has been a reduction in the percentage of new oak, to 90% in 1999 and 85% in 2000. "We're looking for more precision of fruit and more focused tannins," he explained.