1947 Latour

Full, rich, yet with lots of acidity. Clearly an old wine that is just starting to lose its fruit, it is still pretty intense with admirable freshness and transparency – a bit like a great old burgundy with real vivacity. Its appeal was broad and smudgy rather than sharp focused. I thought it could have been a 1962! (JR)

I never had much luck with this wine (from my birth year), but a bottle tasted in late March was the finest I have ever had. Although fragile, with considerable amber to its color, it offers a nose of smoked herbs, caramel, and sweet roasted fruit. The palate impression of sweet fruit and abundant glycerin make it a delicious, alluring Latour. The wine dried out in the glass, becoming more marked by acidity and tannin after 10-15 minutes. While still impressive, it needs to be drunk up.

Tasted at the 1947 dinner at The Square, London. Two bottles of the Latour ’47 were opened together, the first seemingly enervated with molasses and peppermint on the nose, smooth and fleshy on the palate but nowhere near the class of the 1949 opened at the chateau two years earlier. (89) The second bottle is far superior, immediately demonstrating much more vigour and tension on the captivating nose with Szechuan pepper, peppermint, dried dandelion and tangerine all vying for attention. It seems effervescent and shimmering, akin to the ’59. The palate is exotic and sumptuous with plenty of sweet red berries and spice, although it cannot discard its intrinsic sense of aristocracy and conservatism at the heart of every great Latour. The finish is long and sensual, almost like a Right Bank 1947 than one of the stars of the Left Bank. Voted by many as wine of the night, it personally was not mine, but it remains a truly great First Growth. Apr 2013, www.robertparker.com