DOMAINE VINCENT LATOUR MEURSAULT 1ER CRU GROUTTE D’OR 2020

Although the Latour-Labille family has been making wine since 1792, Vincent Latour began turning heads in Burgundy after the release of his 2006 vintage when he was nominated as winemaker of the year by the well-respected local magazine, Bourgogne Aujourd’hui. He has also been recognized several times as the best new/young winemaker in the Côte de Beaune and in the Côte de Nuits as the result of an annual blind tasting hosted by local vignerons.

Vincent is hand-crafting exceptional Meursault from eight hectares of vines. His father used to sell off their grapes, but when Vincent took over from his father in 1998, he decided to bottle all of their production, roughly 4,000 cases. Vincent made some improvements over the years, including using whole cluster fermentation, integrating demi-muids and foudres into the mix, and a longer élévage. A mix of used and new demi-muids, barrels, and foudres are used for aging in order to have better control of the oak influence. Work in the vineyard follows lutte raisonée methods and native yeasts are used for fermentation. After pressing, must goes into 600L barrels or foudres.

2020 Vintage Notes from Allen Meadows, Burghound, June 2022:

The always laconic Vincent Latour runs this 8.7 ha domaine that consists of 7 ha planted to chardonnay and 1.7 ha planted to pinot noir (see Issue 86 for the 2020 red reviews). The domaine has existed since 1972 under the name of Domaine Jean Latour-Labille et Fils. Vincent joined his father in 1998 and then in 2010 the name was changed to its present eponymous incarnation. Latour described the 2020 growing season as “having some similarities to the 2019 season in that it was markedly hot and exceptionally dry. As such, we had very little disease pressure, in fact we made only 5 treatments the entire season, which I can assure you is very few. We began picking with the pinot on the 27th of August and then began with the chardonnay on the 29th. Yields were quite good without being really high at between 50 and 60 hl/ha and very reasonable potential alcohols as they ranged from 12.5 to 13.5%. I like the 2020 vintage quite a bit and particularly in white.” Latour noted that that whites were bottled in December 2021.