Let’s Go ‘Round Again: The 2026 Château Latour Releases
Let’s go ’round again
Maybe we’ll turn back the hands of time
Let’s go ’round again
One more time
– Let’s Go Round Again, The Average White Band (1980)
When I started writing on Winedoctor more than two decades ago it quickly became apparent that some domaines and châteaux would feature more frequently than others. One of the first domaines I ever visited in the Loire Valley, for example, was Château Pierre-Bise, and I used to meet and taste with Claude Papin every year. Even though responsibility for the running of this property has transitioned from Claude to his son René I still taste here regularly. So too at a number of domaines in Chinon, such as Bernard Baudry and Philippe Alliet, not surprising given the fact the vineyards are a short drive from my pied à terre in the region.
I never imagined that Château Latour would nestle in alongside these regularly featured domaines.
Of course that was before François Pinault, Frédéric Engerer and team decided to withdraw from the en primeur system, back in 2012. In the wake of this decision it did not take too long for the release of the Latour wines to become an annual fixture in the wine calendar. It happens, in case you haven’t realised, in March.
And so, in the words of the Average White Band (although, being honest, I think they might have been singing about something other than this first-growth Pauillac), let’s go ’round again with another trio of wines from the only big-name Bordeaux estate to have truly shaken off the shackles of the en primeur system.
