Maison Louis Latour’s 2024 En Primeur tasting
Getting straight to it, this is a very special invitation to all members of the wine industry press and trade (which, if you’re reading this, we imagine is very likely you!)
It’s to the first ever UK tasting of Louis Latour’s Burgundy En Primeur offering, alongside a selection of older vintages for comparison … and just downright enjoyment.
It’s on 13th January from 10am to 4pm in the Clarence & St James Room at the magnificent Claridges Hotel, Brook Street, Mayfair, London. W1K 4HR.
And now, having said all that … Happy New Year!
However you spent your festive period, we hope it was that potent combination of joyous and restful, that it featured ever-so-slightly too much excellent food, and was tinted with the glow of at least a bottle or two of something outrageously good.
This time of year can sometimes feel a bit of a crash back to reality, can’t it? Christmas in the rearview, email inboxes starting to fill again (apologies!) and winter somehow only a third of the way through.
It’s also a time when, for understandable and laudable reasons, people don’t tend to drink quite so much wine. Honestly, if Flo hadn’t stood behind our desk and coughed politely but meaningfully, in a way that sounded almost exactly like ‘En Primeur email’, we would have been scratching our heads for what to write about.
But actually, En Primeur is the perfect way to begin your year in wine.
Looking back to look forward
It’s a fascinating, but rather unusual way to taste wine, En Primeur.
Sampling bottles that – by their very nature – are not yet ready for consumption. Wines that still need a good slumber in bottle before they’re really ready for drinking.
(One reason we’re supplementing the En Primeur offerings at the Latour tasting with some current and well-aged vintages to taste!)
But it’s also, for those of us who aren’t producers, our first proper chance to look at a vintage gone by, remember how it was, and think about how it might continue on its long, fascinating journey.
In the case of 2024, a year that has resulted in what looks like a classic Burgundy vintage, for real purists of the region … but one which brutal weather in late spring absolutely hammered yields right across the board.
Which means there’s very little to go round, incidentally – all the more important to get in early.
A celebration of the vintage cycle
So as we ease into another year, perhaps a Janus-style En Primeur retrospective is the best way to start the process after all.
A reminder, at the risk of waxing philosophical, that wine is a creature of cycles. That, although every vintage is different – its own challenges, glories, characters and nuances, it always starts in, and returns to, the same place.
A reminder, perhaps, that we have been here before. That the year is full of potential, never more so than today.
We hope you join us on the 13th to celebrate that potential, those exciting beginnings, at the first UK Louis Latour En Primeur.
Email Flo at florence.fagan@fells.co.uk to book your place.
Happy New Year – we hope 2026 is everything you could wish for.
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