Formidable wine at Chateau Latour in 2011

There’s no doubt that 2011 is an inconsistent vintage in Bordeaux. The same problems that affected the region generally also had a big impact in Pauillac. Here, as elsewhere, a combination of drought, a warm, dry spring, followed by a cool autumnal summer, with occasional severe heat spikes, knocked the growth cycle out kilter. Pauillac has some of the greatest terroir on earth of course. It makes it naturally well insured against the most meagre and challenging of years. Given too the extraordinary level of investment in the vineyards and the cellars over the past decade, plus obsessive attention to detail and daily micromanagement at the finest properties, it’s hardly surprising, then, that the best estates here deliver an extremely decent glass of 2011. So much so in fact you almost forget what a tricky harvest this was to grow and vinify. Almost….

Tasted on my first morning last week, Mouton was also the first of the first growths I tasted. I can remember last year’s 2009 clearly and my impression was that in 2010 Phillipe Dhalluin has actually trumped that wine. I also thought that Clerc Milon and d’Armailhac had switched characters slightly, the d’Armailhac slightly more reticent and the Clerc Milon seemingly more forward and come hither. Subsequent tastings at the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux reversed this thought slightly, but there is no doubt that both have made exceptional wines in 2010, Clerc Milon especially. There is a concentration and a density to both these wines. Petit Mouton is also most certainly even better than 2009, and I was struck in general by the step change in the quality of the so called ‘second’ wines of the first growths tasted across the week.