Louis Latour
Grand Cru
Corton Charlemagne
2017

The producer

Now in the eleventh generation of Latour’s, and the seventh Louis in Louis-Fabrice Latour, the domaine covers more than 50 hectares stretching from Chablis to Chassagne-Montrachet, Beaujolais, Macon and non-Burgundian Ardeche and Provence.

While Maison Louis Latour is the larger negociant business, Domaine Louis Latour produces wines from their own vineyard holdings in the Cote d’Or including a whopping 17ha of Grand Cru Corton and 10ha of Corton-Charlemagne and Grand Cru holdings from Gevrey-Chambertin to Chassagne-Montrachet.

In Vosne-Romanee, Latour has owned a slice of Romanee-Saint-Vivant neighbouring that of the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti’s since 1898 and which is called “Les Quatre Journaux” after the ancient area that could be ploughed in a day. Beautifully perfumed with spice and dark fruits, this is one of Latour’s best wines. They also produce an excellent white from Corton Charlemagne.

The wine

Louis Latour owns 10.5 hectares in the Corton Charlemagne vineyard, which makes them the biggest owner in the appellation. The vineyard plot has a prime south-easterly aspect and the soil is rich in limestone. Fermentation followed by 8-10 months ageing take place in 100% new oak barrels from Louis Latour’s own cooperage. A frequent recipient of top scores from the world’s leading critics, Latour’s Corton is delicious when young but can also age, thus gaining increasing complexity, over 10-15 years. 

We choose our wines based on a range of criteria (see how we choose our wines) of which critic scores is just one. Rather than simply highlight the best score to promote a wine, our average critic score is calculated from the scores provided by several respected wine critics, who we follow for specific regions. They do not represent all critic scores and, wherever possible, we try and give more weight to more recent reviews. Where appropriate we consider market-based scores like Global Wine Score or Wine Searcher Average scores.

As a rule, we look to offer wines that achieve a 92/100 average critic score or better and frankly a lot of very good wines simply don’t make the cut. As a high-end provider we want to reflect that positioning in the quality of wines we offer. Such wines are only a tiny fraction of those generally on offer in the market. We believe that an average score is a more conservative and representative approach, but it is still subjective and only offered as a guide to our customers, who will (and should) do their own research. We will add individual critic scores to our website in the future.