Ratings & Tasting Notes:

97 points — Decanter (March 2022)
Classic Latour, with a savoury, meaty note to the ripe plummy fruit and a hint of leather at the close. The reviewer records that although August was hot, rain arrived at harvest and the team held off picking until October to wait it out. The final blend is 79% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Merlot, 2% Petit Verdot and 1% Cabernet Franc, with the grand vin drawing on just over half the estate’s crop. Bright, fresh fruit, considerable tannin and impressive reserves of extract, and surprisingly long.

96 points — Jeb Dunnuck (February 2018)
Dunnuck describes a wine firing on all cylinders and over-delivering for the vintage, with incredible aromatics of crème de cassis, exotic spices, lead pencil shavings, forest floor and truffles. Deep, medium to full-bodied and incredibly elegant, with polished tannin — utterly irresistible on the day, though given its balance and length he expected another fifteen to twenty years of prime drinking ahead of it.

96 points — The Wine Independent (March 2024)
Deep garnet-brick in colour, rolling out of the glass with ready-to-go scents of unsmoked cigars, cedar chest, fragrant soil and iron ore, giving way to a core of prunes and redcurrant jelly with a touch of potpourri. The medium-bodied palate is wonderfully racy and energetic, with lightly chewy tannins and a mineral finish.

96 points — Vinous (Neal Martin, June 2021)
An exquisite bouquet of blackberry, hints of sloe, cedar and mint, all very complex and beautifully defined, with a slight pitted black olive aroma surfacing over time. The palate is medium-bodied with precise tannins and white and black pepper mixed with clove and tobacco. Pauillac through and through, Latour through and through. Martin calls it one of the best bottles of the 2001 he has tasted, and expects it to battle the 2002 for supremacy.

Cult Wines International Notes:

Château Latour stands at the southern edge of Pauillac, its vineyards running down toward the Gironde, on a site occupied since at least the fourteenth century. A First Growth in the 1855 classification and the smallest of the first growths in the Médoc, it has been owned since 1993 by François Pinault, with Frédéric Engerer at the helm through the period that produced this wine. The estate is known for the most structured and longest-lived wine in Bordeaux — dense, mineral, famously slow to open — and in 2012 it withdrew from the en primeur system entirely, releasing its wines only when the château judges them ready to drink.

2001 has long lived in the shadow of the celebrated 2000, and has been steadily reappraised upward ever since. August was hot, rain arrived at harvest, and the team held off picking until October to wait the weather out — a decision that shaped the vintage here. The blend is 79% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Merlot, 2% Petit Verdot and 1% Cabernet Franc, with just over half the estate’s crop going into the grand vin. The wine is deep garnet-brick, offering crème de cassis, blackberry, sloe, prune and redcurrant over cedar, unsmoked cigars, lead pencil, forest floor, truffle, iron ore and a savoury, meaty note. Medium to full-bodied, racy and energetic, with precise, lightly chewy tannins, impressive extract and a long mineral finish. Not a powerful Latour, but a refined and controlled one, and now drinking beautifully.

Bottle Size:

750 mL

Storage History:

Always stored on its side in a climate-controlled cellar.

Condition:

Outstanding condition.

Please note: The condition of the bottle you will receive is accurately reflected by the one shown in the images.