Latour 2009: The Thunderbolt Pauillac That Still Mints Gold
Bacchus relives the night he rode lightning into Château Latour’s vaulted cellar - and shows why this 100-point titan remains the safest talisman in any fine-wine portfolio.
When the vineyard shook
One April evening in 2010 a storm cracked open the Gironde sky. I hitched a bolt, slid through Latour’s sandstone walls and tasted the infant wine still humming in 100-year-old barriques. The Cabernet - 91 percent, dark as graphite - pulsed with power and perfume. I sparked a vine-leaf brand on three barrels, whispering that they would outlast empires. Fifteen harvests later those bottles trade worldwide at roughly 1,300 USD each, while my branded cask lies hidden, compounding quietly in the dark.
Perfection notarised by critics
Robert Parker, Lisa Perrotti-Brown and James Suckling each filed a perfect 100, Parker calling the wine “one of the most monumental Latours ever made”. Warm, dry 2009 weather delivered ripe power without tipping the scale, giving the wine the tannic spine to cruise to 2070 yet enough silk to pour tonight if you must.
Scarcity you can bank on
Latour quit the en-primeur carnival after the 2011 vintage, choosing instead to trickle out “ready” bottles direct from its own cellars – provenance guaranteed, supply throttled. The latest tranche, just 1,000 cases, surfaced in September 2024 at €910 a bottle, precisely 18 percent above the original 2010 offer and 5.8 percent up on the 2020 ex-cellar price.
Price pulse – compound interest in a glass
Back in 2010 the wine surfaced at roughly €770 a bottle. A decade on, the estate’s first ex-cellar release lifted the ask to €860, and merchants quickly quoted about £10,300 per 12-bottle case. When the 2024 storm of fresh stock hit at €910, offers spiked to £11,100 before easing: today the market clears around £9,480, with recent trades as low as £8,602. Convert that to retail and a single bottle now averages roughly $1,335, according to Wine-Searcher – a rise of about 30 percent over the past five years and close to 70 percent since 2014, all while showing volatility closer to investment-grade bonds than equities.
Bacchus’s evergreen play
Catch the price lull that follows each ex-cellar release; insist on original-wood cases stored in bonded warehouses; then wait for 2035-2045, when tertiary perfumes of cedar and graphite will collide with peak millennial spending power. Patience, like oak, rewards the faithful.
