Summer 1970 in the Bordeaux wine growing areas was just about perfect. The warm and sunny weather enabled the grapes to ripen in ideal conditions.

Château Latour picked its grapes from 28th September to 17th October. The resulting wine was uncompromisingly tannic. In its early days it was a wine that was chewed rather than drunk.

The 1970 vintage of Latour was released ex-château at 40,000 francs per tonneau – the traditional unit of pricing and of sale in Bordeaux, with one tonneau equivalent to four 225-litre barriques, or 1,200 bottles in total.

This equates to about £2.62 per bottle, which would be about £32 today…

Latour is arguably the best wine of the 1970 Bordeaux vintage.

There were other very good wines from Bordeaux that year (Mouton Rothschild, Haut-Brion and Petrus, for example) but most of them have not endured as long and well as the Latour ’70… 🍷