Les Forts de Latour 2016 (RP95)

The 2016 Les Forts de Latour is superb, unwinding in the glass with notions of blackcurrants, wild berries, sweet loamy soil, cigar wrapper and English walnuts. Medium to full-bodied, deep and layered, it’s concentrated and tightly wound, with superb depth at the core, lively acids and ripe, powdery tannins. This is an impeccably balanced, utterly classical Forts de Latour worth a special effort to seek out.With Chateau Latour’s new releases for the year arriving on the market in the next few days, I took the opportunity to taste the wines with the estate’s perfectionist technical director Helene Genin on my most recent visit. I’ll be including more insights into Latour’s contemporary viticulture and winemaking—as well as some observations on what makes Latour’s famous enclos so special—in my report on the bottled 2019s. This short article, in the interests of timeliness, is limited to the tasting notes themselves. As those notes make clear, between the expressive, charming 2017 Le Pauillac de Chateau Latour; the concentrated, impeccably balanced 2016 Les Forts de Latour; and the deep, introverted, utterly classical 2014 Latour itself, admirers of this estate will find three excellent wines that are cut from very different cloth, and all three are more than worthy of attention.