2005 Maison Louis Latour Romanée-Saint-Vivant Les Quatre Journaux Grand Cru

The 2005 Romanee St.-Vivant Les 4 Journaux offers a bright and energetic personality, with meaty, musky, smoky and faintly fungal aromas, ample black fruit and beef marrow on the palate, and a tightly-stitched structure. I suspect this needs to recover from its very recent bottling, but even so the finish is satisfyingly long. Louis-Fabrice Latour and oenologue Jean-Charles Thomas garner frequent praise for their white wines but have drawn some criticism for their Pinots, particularly directed at their practice of flash pasteurization. I have no problem with Latour’s avowed adherence to “the school of finesse,” but some of the reds from 2005 simply lacked the requisite clarity or concentration to be distinctive. That said, there are certainly a number of reds this year – wines Latour began bottling less than eleven months after harvest – that are well worth recommending. (A “D” after a listing indicates that the wine is from the Latour domaine.) Also recommended: 2005 Chassagne-Montrachet ($29.00; 85-87), 2005 Chassagne-Montrachet Morgeots ($39.00; 86), 2005 Aloxe Corton D ($45.00;85), 2005 Santenay La Combe ($30.00;86), 2005 Beaune Les Perrieres ($55.00;86), 2005 Chambolle-Musigny Les Charmes ($113.00;85-87), 2005 Gevrey-Chambertin Lavaux St.-Jacques ($107.00;85), 2005 Vosne-Romanee Les Beaumonts ($131.00;86), 2005 Echezeaux ($225.00;86+?). Louis Latour has numerous importers throughout the U.S.