Château Latour

Listen first. Out here, the wind comes off the water, across rows of low vines, and through the gravel underfoot. Each step crunches. The stones are pale and rounded, some the size of a hen's egg. Ahead, a squat round tower of honey-coloured stone stands alone among the vines. There is no grand gate and no rushing traffic. There is only the quiet of a place where very little has changed in the way the land is worked.

Welcome to Château Latour, at the southern edge of the Pauillac wine commune. You are on the left bank of the Gironde estuary in Bordeaux. Here the great rivers of southwest France widen into a broad tidal stretch before they reach the Atlantic. That water is close. On a clear day you can sense it beyond the last rows of vines. As you will hear, it is one of the reasons this estate became what it is.

The name comes from that tower — la tour, in French. A fortified tower stood near here during the Hundred Years' War. That was the long struggle between the English and French crowns, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. At that time, this part of France belonged to the English throne. The old fortress guarded the estuary against raiders. It did not survive. The round tower you see today is a later building, usually described as a seventeenth-century dovecote, a home for pigeons.

Here is the first surprise. Many visitors assume this tower is the medieval fortress itself. It is not. Yet the estate's label shows a tower with a lion on top, and that image honours the older stronghold. So the building in the vineyard and the building on the bottle are not quite the same tower. The memory of one has passed to the other. Over the centuries the dovecote has become the symbol of the whole estate.

Now look down again at the ground. The best vines at Latour grow on a block of land near the château called the Enclos, meaning the enclosure. The soil is deep gravel over clay. Gravel drains quickly, so the vine roots must push far down to find water. Gravel also holds the day's warmth and gives it back at night. Struggling roots and warm stones together help the grapes ripen slowly and fully.

The estuary plays its part too. Large bodies of water soften the climate around them. In spring, the nearby Gironde can help protect these vines from the worst frosts. In autumn, it can keep the air a little milder. Winemakers often say Latour is consistent in difficult years, and this sheltered position is part of the reason. The vines here are mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, the dark, firm grape that defines the great wines of this bank.

In the eighteenth century, the estate belonged to the powerful Ségur family. One of them, Nicolas-Alexandre de Ségur, also owned Château Lafite nearby. He was known as the Prince of Vines. Under owners like these, the great Médoc estates began to sell wine under their own names, rather than as anonymous Bordeaux. Buyers in London and Amsterdam started asking for Latour by name. That was a new idea at the time, and it shaped the whole wine world.

Then came 1855. For the Universal Exhibition in Paris, Bordeaux wine brokers ranked the region's red wines, largely by their market prices. Only four estates reached the top tier, called First Growths. Latour was one of them, alongside Lafite, Margaux, and Haut-Brion. A fifth, Mouton Rothschild, was promoted in 1973. This ranking has barely changed since. A list made by merchants in the middle of the nineteenth century still shapes prices around the world today.

Here is the second surprise. For a large part of the twentieth century, this very French estate was in British hands. In the 1960s, a British group, including the Pearson company and the wine merchant Harveys of Bristol, took control. They invested heavily. Latour became one of the first top Bordeaux estates to ferment in temperature-controlled stainless steel vats. Some traditionalists frowned. The results won most of them over, and many neighbours later followed the same path.

In 1993, the estate returned to French ownership. The businessman François Pinault bought it through his family company, Artémis. Since then, Latour has made another bold choice. Most Bordeaux estates sell their wine early, as futures, while it is still ageing in barrel. This system is called en primeur. Starting with the 2012 vintage, Latour left this system. It now holds its wine in its own cellars and releases it only when the team judges it ready to drink.

That decision tells you something about the character of the place. Latour has a reputation for wines that are slow to open and long to live. Some bottles need decades. The estate also makes a second wine, Les Forts de Latour, and a third, simply labelled Pauillac. They come partly from younger vines and from parcels outside the Enclos. In recent years, the vineyards have also moved toward organic farming, with careful work in the soil between the rows.

If you visit, you will notice how modest the château house is. It is not a fairy-tale castle. It is an elegant, low country house, half hidden by trees. The real monuments here are outside: the tower, the gravel, the rows trained low to the ground. Tastings and cellar visits are by appointment only, so arrange them well in advance. Even from the road, though, you can read the landscape and understand why this patch of earth matters.

Before you leave, turn slowly in a full circle. Notice the flatness, broken only by the tower and the line of trees. Notice the faint grey shine of the estuary, and the smell of earth and leaves. Somewhere under your feet, the roots go down far deeper than you are tall. As you walk away, listen once more to the gravel. That small, dry sound has been part of this place for centuries.