Saturday, December 08, 2007

Les Forts de Latour 1985

Les forts is the second wine of Chateau Latour, and its a wine Ive always wanted to try. Its pretty difficult to get hold of, presumable a dual issue of quantity released (small) and demand (high), but I managed to grab two bottles from a broking list earlier this year when I got a bit of money to spend on mature claret.
The colour was fantastic - cerise turning brick red, with a lovely reddish-brown rim. On the nose the aroma that stood out for me was one of smoked red peppers - think Tex-mex food. Not one that I was expecting at all, especially from a decent claret. But the flavours were wonderful. Soft and elegant red fruit character with elegant soft tannins, finely woven flavours of oak - tobacco and hints of bourbon vanilla. The finish was exceptionally long and seemed to add different elements to the flavours. It wasnt cheap - its listed at £255 a bottle on the list, which isnt much more that what I paid for it, but I feel it was worth every penny and more. Next year Im going to try and hunt down some more!

(Image from Joy from Cooking blog - http://megpug.blogspot.com/)

In a homage to Chateau Petrogasm this is the image that I reckon would sum up the dish.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks Garry! I love the review; may we post it at the Chateau?

Happy Holidays,

Benjamin Saltzman
Founder
Wine Reviews at Chateau Petrogasm
http://www.chateaupetrogasm.com

grazza said...

Id love for you to use it at the Chateau, the only problem might be that I dont own the rights to the photograph. I have tried to contact the person I believe to be the owner to no avail. So technically my use of the photo may be in breach of copyright (call the DMCA cops!!!). Anyways glad you enjoyed it, and hopefully once I have my new digital camera I hope to do more in the style of Petrogasm!

grazza

Anonymous said...

Check it out:

http://chateaupetrogasm.com/2008/01/02/1985-les-forts-de-latour-paulliac-bordeaux-fr-255/