Louis Latour Romanee-St-Vivant Les Quatre Journaux Grand Cru 2018
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Suckling
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Morris
Jasper
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A dense, layered young red with extraordinary depth and power. Muscular, yet so balanced and polished. The ripe strawberry and cherry character is impressive with hints of hazelnuts and mushrooms. But it’s the texture that makes it great. It’s an indication of the superb structure. Try after 2025.
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Wine Enthusiast
Sumptuous black cherry flickers across the nose on this wine in tantalizing fashion, only to disappear again. The palate provides a firm but smooth channel for all this ripe, smooth and aromatic fruit. Compact, profound and structured, the velvety body also flexes with muscle. Energy pulses below the surface. Forbidding for now, the wine is certain to relax into pleasure. Drink 2030–2050.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The king of the cellar is Latour's 2018 Romanée-Saint-Vivant Grand Cru Les Quatre Journaux, an ample and enveloping wine that wafts from the glass with aromas of cherries, wild berries, dark chocolate, rich spices and orange rind. Full-bodied, fleshy and muscular, it's supple and broad-shouldered, concluding with a long and expansive finish.
Barrel Sample: 92-94 -
Jasper Morris
There is no especial density of colour to this flagship Louis Latour wine. The bouquet, which is otherwise on the quiet side, shows the oak first up. Darker fruit on the palate, with several layers and the tannins are well managed. A good to very good Burgundy without quite fulfilling the potential of Romanée St-Vivant.
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Maison Louis Latour is one of the most highly-respected négociant-éléveurs in Burgundy. Maison Louis Latour is the producer of some of the finest Burgundian wines but has also pioneered the production of fine wines from outside Burgundy's confines. These wines from the Ardèche and the Côteaux de Verdon are slowly gaining esteem for their unmatchable quality outside Burgundy.
All the grapes from the vineyards owned by the Latour family are vinified and aged in the attractive cuverie of Chateau Corton Grancey in Aloxe-Corton. The winery was the first purpose-built cuverie in France and remains the oldest still functioning. A unique railway system with elevators allows the entire wine-making process to be achieved by the use of gravity. This eliminates the threat of oxidation from unnecessary pumping of the must. Since 1985, Louis Latour has been selling the wines of its own vineyards under the name Domaine Louis Latour.
Louis Latour has been a leader in environmentally responsible winemaking for over 15 years. Louis Latour has had ISO 14001 accreditation for Environmental Management Systems since 2003 and has been part of the European association FARRE since 1998- a group of like-minded companies who seek to develop and promote sustainable methods of agriculture.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
This is the village for the most die-hard Burgundy fanatics. Vosne-Romanée has for many hundreds of years been the source of the most sought-after Pinot Noir in Burgundy. The village claims six Grands Crus—and some of the most famous at that—but in other villages where owners manage tiny parcels or a few rows of any one vineyard, monopolies dominate the Grands Crus of Vosne-Romanee.
Of these monopolies, Domaine Romanee-Conti (DRC) reigns supreme, claiming not only more total vineyard area than any other producer, but outright owning the entirety of two of the Grands Crus and a majority of two others. In its full possession are naturally Romanée-Conti, as well as La Tâche. DRC also owns most of Richebourg and Romanée-St-Vivant. The final two, La Grande Rue and La Romanée are completely owned by other other produers: François Lamarche and Comte Liger Belair, respectively.
While one could spend a lifetime on the puzzles of land ownership in Burgundy, the point is that Vosne-Romanee contains the most valuable pieces of vineyard real estate in the world. Pinot Noir from any of its vineyards—especially from within its 27ha of Grand Cru or 58 ha of Premier Cru land—is going to rank among the best.
The most outstanding wines from this village have everything: finesse and elegance coupled with the body and sturdiness for incredibly long aging ability. They are intensely floral and exotically spiced. Beautifully ripe, complex and ephemeral throughout, they are robust, yet fine-grained in texture. These wines will stay gorgeous for the long haul.