We drank this bottle of 1970 Château Latour next to a bottle of 1970 Château Lafleur-Pétrus and it was fascinating to see just how much further behind in its evolution the Latour was at this time. Of course, back in this era, this is one of the things that Latour was most famous for: its extremely slow pace of evolution in bottle! The wine today is deep, vibrant and shows beautiful sweetness to its bottomless fruit component, with the bouquet wafting from the glass in a still slightly primary blend of sappy cassis and black cherries, cigar smoke, gravelly soil tones, incipient notes of walnut, cigar wrapper and cedary oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and loaded with sappy black fruit, with signature Latour gravelly minerality underneath, superb balance and grip, ripe, fairly modest tannins and a very long, pure and still slightly angular finish. This is going to be a stunning vintage of old school Latour when it is fully mature, but it still deserves a bit more time in the cellar just to allow it to blossom completely! Given that it is already fifty-three years of age, it does indeed put into perspective the glacial pace at which great old Latour developed in bottle!