2016 Louis Latour Romanee St Vivant Grand Cru 750 ml

Burgundy’s great Louis-Fabrice Latour has finally harpooned his white whale—the first 100-point Louis Latour EVER.  

From one of the most sacred vineyard plots on Earth comes the very first 100-point Louis Latour red: the 2016 Louis Latour Romanée-St.-Vivant Grand Cru Les Quatre Journaux. Les Quatre Journaux is one of Latour’s most formidable red wines, a Grand Cru Pinot Noir that James Suckling deemed perfect, saying it “shows its intensity and complexity and greatness from the beginning.” 

Latour’s parcel in Romanée-St.-Vivant is located in the southwestern corner; its first row of vines are separated from the Romanée-Conti Grand Cru by a narrow tractor path. Showing wild strawberry, complex herb and earth notes, plus a tightly-knit texture, this is a beautiful bottling poised for the long haul—a snapshot of one of the world’s greatest Pinot Noir vineyards, by one of Burgundy’s eminent producers. 48 bottles coming directly from Louis Latour’s cellars. A must-have for serious Burgundy collectors, and anyone with an affinity for Pinot Noir. 

The precious source of this perfect Pinot Noir is just below route départementale 109, where you’ll find the world’s greatest Pinot Noir vineyards. Just before 109 turns south into the village of Vosne-Romanée, the Grands Crus of la Tâche, la Romanée-Conti, le Richebourg, and Romanée-St.-Vivant all hug one another in a single blessed cluster.  

A stone’s throw away and immediately west of the village is the tiny parcel of the Romanée-St.-Vivant vineyard that Maison Louis Latour acquired in 1898: the Clos des Quatre Journaux. A journal is an old Burgundian measurement of land equal to 0.4 hectares, or about one acre. Since that purchase 120 years ago, Latour sold half of their stake in the vineyard, reducing their holdings from quatre to deux journaux—just two acres.

Despite its size, this modest parcel of iron-rich clay yields what is now undoubtedly Latour’s most grand red wine. Clive Coates MW calls Romanée-St.-Vivant the most feminine and elegant of the Vosne-Romanée Grands Crus, saying it is “an exquisitely perfumed wine, silk where Richebourg is velvet, but no less intense, no less beautiful.” Powerfully aromatic, with both finesse and puissance, the 2016 Louis Latour Romanée-St.-Vivant Grand Cru Les Quatre Journaux is a wine that will, for more than two decades into the future, stand as gorgeous evidence of why Louis Latour claimed this plot more than a century ago.