Château Latour: Wines
At harvest the fruit is picked by hand into small, 8-kilogram trays; yields vary so much these days I am reluctant to provide figures, but a typical yield might be around 35 hl/ha, although it can go much lower of course, such as the 25 hl/ha seen in the difficult 2013 vintage, and the disastrous 11 hl/ha seen in the mildew-afflicted 2024 vintage.
The trays of freshly-picked fruit are then being taken the short distance up to the chai. The fruit is raised to the upper levels, and then sorted twice before heading to the vats. The first sorting is traditional, a visual examination over a sorting table to remove vegetative matter and any obviously substandard fruit, while after destemming a second sorting further enhances selection. For years the approach to this second sorting has again been traditional, depending on human skill rather than new technologies. In the 2024 vintage, however, the team here employed optical sorting for the first time, on the Cabernet Sauvignon harvest. In a mildew-afflicted vintage I would think it would be very efficient in excluding substandard or dried berries. Latour has the financial backing to dip into a new technology as and when required though, and I would not assume optical sorting is therefore here to stay.
The fruit is then lightly crushed and sent to the thermoregulated stainless steel vats. These vary greatly in size, ranging from just 12 up to 170 hectolitres, and thus they allow for fermentation of many different lots of varying sizes, divided up according to plot of origin, age of vine and naturally grape variety.
