This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
News
Louis Latour launches Pinot from Beaujolais
Beaune-based grower and négociant Louis Latour has released a new Pinot Noir in the UK that hails from Beaujolais.
Louis-Fabrice Latour has declared Les Pierres Dorées to be ‘the most beautiful region in France’
Called Les Pierres Dorées, meaning Golden Stones, the wine comes from a Pinot Noir vineyard planted by Louis Latour in 2012 in the south of Beaujolais, 40km north-west of Lyon, and retails for £15.
As previously reported by the drinks business, Maison Louis Latour has been stepping up its activity in Beaujolais as a solution to the increasing pressure on Burgundy’s Pinot Noir supplies.
The move has included investment in the new appellations of Coteaux Bourguignons and Bourgogne Gamay, both introduced to the Beaujolais region in 2012, following Louis Latour’s purchase of the 18-hectare Fleurie property Château des Labourons in October 2011, and before that, the company’s acquisition of Beaujolais producer Maison Henry Fessy in January 2008.
Speaking to db back in 2013, Louis Latour sales director Bruno Pépin stressed the potential in Beaujolais for Pinot Noir, and relative value of the vineyards in the region when compared to Burgundy, particularly the Côte d’Or.
Pépin said that a single hectare of vineyard in one of the 10 Beaujolais crus cost between €40,000 for a site in Régnié to €120,000 for a hectare in Fleurie or the best parts of Moulin à Vent.
On average, he explained that land prices were 10 times cheaper than the Côte d’Or, with the least expensive vineyard in “any Burgundy village is selling for €500,000”.
As for retail prices for the wine produced from these sites, Pépin recorded, “There was a time when the best crus [from Beaujolais] sold at the same price as Pommard Premier Cru or Clos de Vougeot.”
Meanwhile, Louis-Fabrice Latour, the eleventh generation to head his family’s Beaune-based grower and négociant, is convinced of the important role Pinot Noir can play in the region.
“There is big demand for Pinot Noir and Burgundy is not big enough,” he has previously told db, adding, “I am a great believer that we can make very good Pinot Noir in the south of Beaujolais.”
Pointing to the “limestone, right soil and climate” of the area known as Terres Dorées, Louis-Fabrice explained that the company was focused on buying vineyards at 350-400m altitude in order to compensate for the region’s southerly location just 20 kilometres from Lyon.
This first release of the new wine comes from the 2015 harvest and has a production of around 12,000 bottles. It will retail for around £15.
Louis Latour also produces Pinot Noir from the Var in south east France, where it makes 30,000 cases annually from a 100ha property called Domaine de Valmoissine.
Read more