Napa to Pauillac: Tasting new releases from Château Latour owner Artemis

From the moment that François Pinault first jumped on a helicopter and landed on the lawns of Château Latour in 1993, he’s been surprising the wine establishment.

His ability to invest financially in wine estates was never in doubt. The Pinault family fortune was estimated at €29bn ($32bn) by France’s Challenges magazine in 2019, although some analysis suggests it may be higher.

Scroll down to see Jane Anson’s tasting notes

Away from his day job as honorary chairman of luxury group Kering, which includes the brands Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen and Gucci, Pinault’s slow but sure acquisition of a handful of the world’s top wine brands has been eye-opening.

Artemis Domaines, the wine branch that is headed up by François-Henri Pinault and CEO Frédéric Engerer, concentrated purely on its Pauillac First Growth for its first 20 or so years.

But the past decade has seen a series of strategic, high-end acquisitions that increasingly sets it apart from its Bordeaux counterparts.

The first major purchase came in 2006 with Domaine d’Eugénie, formerly the Réné Engel estate in Burgundy’s Vosne-Romanée and centred around Clos Frantin – now Clos d’Eugénie – that covers 6.61 hectares, with six appellations in red and, since 2012, four in white.

Artemis followed this up by purchasing the prized, if flagging, Château Grillet in the Northern Rhône in 2011.

It then bought the already-starry Araujo Estate in California in 2013, and renamed it Eisele Vineyard in 2016.

Topping off this collection is the even-more-starry Grand Cru monopole Clos de Tart, which Artemis bought in 2017.

Prices for the top Burgundy vineyards were already among the world’s highest, but Artemis was rumoured to have set a new level by paying €34 million per hectare. Financial details were never confirmed, however.

These are not doer-upper properties.

The closest Artemis has come to that is with its Right Bank Bordeaux estates of Siaurac, Vray Croix de Gay and Le Prieuré, where it has a majority stake but not sole ownership.

But, such high-profile acquisitions have not simply showcased Pinault’s ability to spend cash.

Instead, its team is leading the conversation on meticulous winemaking values, specifically through organic and biodynamic farming and low-intervention techniques.

And it’s also more notable than it should be that four of the properties have women winemakers, all promoted internally.

They are Hélène Mingot at Eisele, Jaeok Chu Cramette at Grillet, Hélène Genin at Latour and Pénélope Godéfroy at Siaurac.

What did we learn at this tasting?

This tasting, held at Ten Trinity Square in London, offered a fascinating opportunity to examine the scope of the wine now amassed under the Artemis banner.

The theme was simple; all the wines that are due to be released over the coming year from five of the group’s eight châteaux, with the added enticement of the first new vintage of Château Latour to hit the market since the estate left the traditional en primeur system in 2012.

This meant the spread of vintages on display was wide.

They were mainly from the 2018 vintage, with many tasted as a final blend for the first time and others still presented as barrel samples.

There was also:

• The 2017 vintages of Eisele Altagracia and Château Grillet;
• Eisele 2016 and Pauillac de Latour 2015
• Les Forts de Latour 2014
• Château Latour 2012

As you would expect from such an ambitious producer, there have been plenty of adjustments and additions since the new team arrived at each of the properties.

This includes new labels at Château Grillet in the form of a Condrieu and a Côte de Rhône.

We’ve also seen highly coveted and tiny cuvées of white wine for Domaine d’Eugénie – first introduced in 2012 and made in such small quantities that we were only able to taste the Chassagne-Montrachet.

Every vineyard has seen plots redefined or expansion. This has led to the emergence of new bottlings, such as the Morey-St-Denis at Clos de Tart, or more precise blends, including at Latour.

Our tasting was also a reminder at times that even with generous budgets and an obsession with quality there are some things that you can’t control.

I don’t envy the team launching Latour 2012 into the current economic climate, for example.

And Engerer was open in discussing the challenges of climate change. Interestingly, he feels the effects could be more brutal in Bordeaux versus Napa, because the vines are less well adapted. It’s an instance where the Bordeaux team can learn a lot from their experience in California.

Striving for excellence at this level inevitably means examining faults, and the cross-pollination between these properties is exciting for the development of them all over the coming years.

‘What we try to do is combine respect for what has gone before with an ambition to fine-tune and improve the terroir,’ Engerer said.

See Jane Anson’s ratings and tasting notes from this tasting

See also: 

Bordeaux 2010: The top wines re-tasted in 2020