Chateau Lafite Rothschild VS Chateau Latour with Special Guest Dr. Robert Maliner

Bad news isn't wine. It doesn't improve with age.

Colin Powell

Both Chateau Lafite Rothschild and Chateau Latour improve with age and tonight we give you a rare opportunity to taste both of these first growth Pauillacs back to the 1893 and 1947 vintages, including side by side comparisons in 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005!

This event is limited to 14 people and the fee for this dinner is $1950 per person all-inclusive, for reservations call 954-523-9463 

We will take a bottle of Chateau Latour or Chateau Lafite as payment for your seat at this event!  Just let us know what vintage of Chateau Latour that you have in your cellar, we will send you back what the value is and you can use your bottle of Chateau Latour or Chateau Lafite to pay for our Chateau Latour vs Chateau Lafite tasting!

Chateau Lafite Rothschild VS Chateau Latour
with Special Guest Dr. Robert Maliner
Thursday, February 17, 2022
7:30 PM

 1893 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac
1947 Chateau Latour Pauillac 
1983 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac
1988 Chateau Latour Pauillac                    
1990 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac                  
1990 Chateau Latour Pauillac  
1995 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac
1995 Chateau Latour Pauillac
2000 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac  
2000 Chateau Latour Pauillac
2005 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Pauillac
2005 Chateau Latour Pauillac

Menu
Cheese and Charcuterie Selection
Grilled Portobello Mushroom filled with Beef Tartar
Duck Confit Tacos with Black Currant Salsa and Foie Gras Dipping Sauce
Beff Wellington with Chestnut Mushroom Duxelle, Foie Gras Pate, Bordeaux Natural Sauce and truffle Shoestring fries
Chocolate Crème Brulee

The fee for this tasting which includes dinner is $1950 + tax, for reservations call 954-523-9463 or e-mail andy@winewatch.com. Please let us know when you make your reservations if you have any food allergies or preferences.

We will take a bottle of Chateau Latour or Chateau Lafite as payment for your seat at this event!  Just let us know what vintage of Chateau Latour that you have in your cellar, we will send you back what the value is and you can use your bottle of Chateau Latour or Chateau Lafite to pay for our Chateau Latour vs Chateau Lafite tasting!

A bit about Chateau Lafite Rothschild:

In the opinion of many wine lovers and certainly in the opinion of the public at large, Chateau Lafite-Rothschild is the greatest red Bordeaux as well as the greatest red wine vineyard in the world. The history of the property is certainly as interesting as the wine itself and is too long and complicated to recount in the short space at hand.

Nevertheless, the high points bear repeating. As with most wines of the Médoc, the fame of Lafite first dates from the eighteenth century. During the reign of Louis XV, Lafite was owned by the very powerful and wealthy Marquis de Ségur, who also owned Latour, Mouton, and Calon Ségur. Upon Ségur's death in 1755, the estate became embroiled in a long and complex battle among the heirs. Over the course of the next one hundred years, it was auctioned twice - the second time in 1868 to the scion of a famous Paris banking family, Baron James de Rothschild. The selling price was an astounding 4,400,000 francs. To properly appreciate the significance of this sum, the equally prestigious Mouton-Rothschild had sold a little more than a decade earlier for one quarter of that sum. The lofty price paid for Lafite was due in no small part to the enormous prestige the property enjoyed as a result of the famous 1855 Grand Cru Classification. At the Paris Exposition in that year, Bordeaux brokers and merchants compiled a list of the top sixty Médoc chateaux and ranked them in five groups. Lafite was placed at the very top of the first group - first of the firsts. Also shortly after the sale to the Rothschilds in 1868, a famous auction of some of the chateau's wonderful old vintages was held. This was a remarkable event, for the wines fetched hitherto unheard of prices - with the 1811, the great Comet vintage, commanding the highest price of all. It was without doubt the greatest wine auction that had ever been seen up to that time. Over the years to the Second World War various Rothschilds ran the chateau, but after the war it seemed that Lafite was just one of many jewels owned by the family - an interest and concern to be visited and supervised when necessary. The period after 1945 was not one of neglect, but the property certainly did not get the care and attention that cousin Baron Philippe fostered on his beloved Mouton-Rothschild. As a result many felt that Lafite gradually began to lose its place of preeminence during the postwar years and that the last great Lafite was produced in the 1959 vintage. In fact, another vintage the equal of the 1959 was not seen for nearly two decades. That was in 1975, the same year that year that the chateau hired a new winemaker, Jean Crete, formerly of Leoville Las Cases and also engaged the consulting services of Emile Peynaud, the famed University of Bordeaux enologist. In 1977 a new generation Rothschild, Eric de Rothschild, arrived to oversee the property and become a hands-on proprietor. The stage was set for Lafite's return to greatness, and the 1975 vintage proved that Lafite still had the stuff.

With nearly 200 acres under vines and an average annual production of 20,000 cases, Lafite is the largest of the first growths both in terms of area and production. The vineyards lie on slopes in the northern end of the commune of Pauillac. Across a meadow on its northern border lies the commune of St. Estèphe and the imposing Chinese Gothic architecture of Chateau Cos D'Estournel. On the Pauillac side, Lafite adjoins Mouton at many points. The chateau itself is a pleasing compendium of medieval turrets and seventeenth and eighteenth century buildings standing among a row of trees on a hill above the famous Routes des Chateaux. The chaise (the cellars where the new wine is aged in barrels) are quite impressive, but even more awesome is the magnificent underground cellar where Lafite's unique collection of old wines goes back to the 1797 vintage. If any one spot on earth is Mecca to the winelover, it is here at Lafite - the one place that connoisseurs the world over must visit once in their lifetime.

And what is one to say of the wines of Lafite that has not already been expressed with all the gloriously extravagant rhetorical fantasies of bygone days? Without attempting to outdo the embellishments of some of the greatest writers of wine lore, we will say only that, at its best, Lafite is the quintessential claret - a wine that combines finesse, breed, depth, and longevity. It certainly is a softer wine than Mouton and Latour, the other two great Pauillacs. This is due no doubt to the high percentage of Merlot used in the blend. And what about recent vintages of Lafite? It is true that Lafite went through spotty times. Although 1961, 1966, and 1970 were remarkable vintages for Bordeaux, we were never impressed with the Lafites of those years. However, Lafite has recently made great wines in 1975, 1976 (the best wine in Bordeaux in that vintage), 1978, 1979, 1981, 1982 (a monumental year for Lafite), 1985, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1995, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2015, 2016 and 2018.

A bit about Chateau Latour:

Since the 14th century vines have been planted at Latour. Towards the end of the 17th century the estate came into the hands of the Segur family, the owners of Calon-Segur and Lafite.  The property was divided during the French Revolution and remained so until 1841 when the family regained control.  The estate remained in family hands for 120 years until 1963; then two English groups purchased 76% of the stock.  The famous tower on the label - La Tour -stands alone at the edge of the vineyard. The tower is all that is left of a fortress built during the middle ages and used to protect the local citizens of Pauillac against pirates.  The chateau on the property is a modest building and belies the majesty of its wines.

There are several factors which contribute to the greatness of Latour; one is the soil.  Of course, every vineyard owner will tell you how important his particular plot of soil is; but the importance of Latour's rests in its unique composition.  50% of it is gravel pebbles the size of eggs!!  The average age of vines at Latour is 33 years, and the vines are allowed to live to maximum age before being uprooted.  It is just this combination of stress placed by the gravelly soils and the old age of the vines which produce very low yield and high quality.  Cabernet Sauvignon accounts for about 75% of the vineyard.  In 1966 the chateau began to make a "second" wine, the Les Forts de Latour.  Les Forts is made from the property's young vines and from vines in what is considered the less desirable portion of the vineyard.  In price and quality it is now considered the equivalent of a second growth.  The wine has all the earmarks of a Latour but with less concentration.

The Latour vineyard covers around 78 hectares of the Pauillac appellation, of which 47 hectares surround the château, these being referred to as L'Enclos. This, the source of the grand vin, extends from the commune boundary with St Julien, where the vines meet its closest neighbor to the south Léoville Las-Cases separated by the Ruisseau de Juillac, which drains into the Gironde. There have been plots added over the 19th century under the control of the Ségur family, which include Comtesse de Lalande and Petit-Batailley, but rarely are they used for the grand vin.  The soil is technically Gunzian gravel, a surface layer just 60 - 100cm deep, beneath which is a subsoil of clay and marl up to 5m, past that is the limestone bedrock of Bordeaux. Cabernet Sauvignon accounts for 80% of the vines, the remainder Merlot (18%), which is planted wherever clay is prominent, then Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot together make up 2%.  The typical blend at Château Latour is 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, the balance Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc.  These percentages vary naturally according to the vintage conditions. There are approximately 18,000 cases of the grand vin produced each year. The next cuvée in the line-up is Les Forts de Latour, made for the first time in 1966, and typically 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot.  There are approximately 11,000 cases produced each year.  But perhaps the best value and defiinatly the hardest to find of the wines made at Latour is the simple Pauillac de Latour.  This stunningly good wine is based on fruit from younger vines outside L'Enclos. Introduced with the 1973 vintage, this cuvée was only made a few times after that in 1974 and 1987.  This wine became a permanent member of the line-up in 1990.

Masculine in a word best describes Latour.  The wines are full-bodied, firm, virile, and tannic.  Two years after the vintage the other great Pauillacs like Lafite and Mouton will usually show better than Latour, for Latour is rarely accessible at an early age.  However, as time passes, Latour will eventually outlast them and can be counted on to be alive and sound when the others are but a memory.  Any knowledgeable claret buyer knows that Latour is always the best bet at rare wine auctions.  Pre-1900 vintages of Latour have held up remarkably well.  Probably the most comprehensive report on all the vintages of Chateau Latour was published in The Underground WineLetter in February of 1984.  It was a summary of tasting notes over different occasions including the legendary vertical tasting of 86 vintages conducted in San Francisco in 1981.  Vintages as far  back as 1865 and 1870 were in impeccable condition; the 1870 received a perfect (20) score with the comment that it was possibly "the greatest red wine ever."  Over the years Chateau Latour has also been regarded by connoisseurs as being the most consistent property in Bordeaux.  According to David Peppercorn in his epic work, Bordeaux: "One of Latour's outstanding characteristics has always been that it is magnificent in poor and moderate years."  Perhaps other chateaux of the Medoc occasionally rise above Latour in the great years, but none of them have come close in the lesser ones.

The modern day era of Chateau Latour began in 1993 French billionaire François Pinault brought Latour into his ring of luxury business portfolio which was later augmented by Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Christie's auction house and Chateau Grillet.  Although the old vintages are stunning I can't think how good these new wines of Chateau Latour will be in 20-30 years from now.   Since Frederic Engerer has taken control of this estate in the late 1990’s Chateau Latour has been the single most consistent wine made in Bordeaux.