Louis Latour : Romanée-Saint-Vivant Grand cru "Les Quatre Journaux" 2014

A beautiful and sexy red with blueberry and blackberry character. Hints of coffee and spices. Medium to full body, firm and silky tannins and a flavorful finish. Very fine and pretty. Delicious now, but there's plenty of backbone and structure for the future. Powerful underneath it all. Drink or hold.

Owner of part of Romanée-Saint-Vivant since December 1898 (1.6 hectares or “Quatre Journaux” at the time), the Latour family later sold half, keeping the 0.8 hectares that go into this sensational cuvée. (One journal being an old Burgundian unit corresponding to about 0.40 ha, or the area a sharecropper could plough in a day, back when work was done without mechanization…). This wine has absolute grace and nobility, with aromas of oriental spices and floral notes of dried rosebuds, a remarkably silky texture rising into airy velvety smoothness, and tannins of magnificent softness. One of the must-have bottles of this vintage!

This elegant version exudes black currant, cherry, boysenberry and spice flavors, tinged by violet hints. Though lean and taut, this finishes long, with grainy tannins coming to the fore. Should unwind nicely in two to three years. Best from 2019 through 2035. 290 cases made.

The 2014 Romanee St Vivant les Quatre Journaux Grand Cru has a clean and quite pure red cherry, wild strawberry and dried orange peel-scented bouquet that will clearly need a couple more years to fully hit its stride. The palate is medium-bodied with fairly bold, rounded tannins. There is good weight on the mid-palate, but where it stumbles is (yet again) toward the finish, which comes across as one-dimensional and lacking the sophistication you seek in a Grand Cru, especially at this price.