1998 Château Latour a Pomerol

Château Latour a Pomerol is located in Pomerol, on the Right Bank region of Bordeaux, where there are no classifications. Nevertheless it has a long and distinguished history, and it is now owned by the Moueix family, which also owns Trotanoy, Petrus and Dominus Estate in Napa Valley. The estate includes about 20 acres of vineyards, which are planted to 90% Merlot and 10% Cabernet Franc. During the mid-20th century the estate’s wines were considered some of the best in Bordeaux and under the Moueix family stewardship the winery in recent vintages has continued to improve. Many collectors consider it to be similar in style to Petrus, though Robert M. Parker Jr., for one, writes that Latour a Pomerol “tends to have more in common to Trotanoy.”

Pomerol is the smallest of Bordeaux’s red wine producing regions, with only about 2,000 acres of vineyards. Located on the east side of the Dordogne River, it is one of the so-called “right bank” appellations and therefore planted primarily to Merlot. Pomerol is unique in Bordeaux in that it is the only district never to have been rated in a classification system. Some historians think Pomerol’s location on the right bank made it unattractive to Bordeaux-based wine traders, who had plenty of wine from Medoc and Graves to export to England and northern Europe. Since ranking estates was essentially a marketing ploy to help brokers sell wine, ranking an area where they did little business held no interest for them. Pomerol didn’t get much attention from the international wine community until the 1960s, when Jean-Pierre Moueix, an entrepreneurial wine merchant, started buying some of Pomerol’s best estates and exporting the wines. Today the influential Moueix family owns Pomerol’s most famous estate, Château Pétrus, along with numerous other Pomerol estates. Pomerol wines, primarily Merlot blended with small amounts of Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, are considered softer and less tannic than left bank Bordeaux.