Chateau Latour vs De Trafford

Four vintages of David Trafford’s Cabernet Sauvignon were recently tasted against their Château Latour equivalents. Christian Eedes reports. International comparative tastings don’t happen that often. It’s as if wine enthusiasts everywhere share an unspoken fear that if these were held too regularly, any hierarchy in the world of wine might be disrupted and chaos would ensue. Why spend thousands on a top Bordeaux if a Cabernet-driven blend at a fraction of the price from some emerging wine region is just as good?

Towards the end of September, Wine Cellar, a wine brokerage and cellaring firm in Cape Town held a tasting comparing Pauillac First Growth Château Latour with the Cabernet Sauvignon from boutique Stellenbosch producer De Trafford. Vintages under scrutiny were 1997, 1998, 2001 and 2003 with the wines tasted in pairs according to year but with the identities of producers concealed in each instance.

There was only one bottle of each wine from each vintage meaning that places were limited, but further than that the only condition of attendance was that you had to be sufficiently interested in the exercise to fork out the R1 050 to be there. There were consequently 21 people from all walks of life assessing the wines, with each participant asked to choose his or her preferred wine from each vintage (De Trafford owner and winemaker David Trafford was also present but did not participate in the voting process for obvious reasons).

It proved a fascinating exercise in that there seemed to be conflicting psychological impulses at work. On the one hand, tasters appeared keen that Latour should fare best as this would reinforce the natural order of things – it is only right and proper that the Latour 2003 which currently sells for R14 500 a bottle should be better than the De Trafford Cabernet Sauvignon 2003, which is sold out but went for a farm price of R135 a bottle. On the other hand, there was also a not-so-well-concealed sense of patriotism among the almost exclusively South African group of tasters, with many willing the De Trafford wines to come out on top and in so doing, stick one to the French!

Final voting saw the De Trafford ’97 trump the Latour ’97 (18 to three), but otherwise the results were close with the De Trafford ’98 just ahead of the Latour ’98 (11 to 10), the Latour ’01 pipping the De Trafford ’01 (11 to 10) and the De Trafford ’03 again slightly in front of the Latour ’03 (12 to nine).

For me, it was easy to spot the De Trafford relative to the Latour when it came to the ’97, ’98 and ’01 vintages. Typically, the wines of the Stellenbosch producer displayed riper fruit and softer tannins than those from its Bordeaux counterpart, and while I recognised the quality in both, they were so disparate in style as to make comparison futile.

When it came to evaluating the two examples in the line-up from the 2003 vintage, cork taint reared its ugly head. There were some who called the Latour spoilt, but this was so slight that agreement could not be reached on the night. Subsequent testing revealed that the wine had a TCA level of 3.9 nanograms per litre, with sensory threshold generally considered to be from 4 nanograms per litre upwards. Though I did not detect overt cork taint on the Latour ’03, this was the one instance were I considered the De Trafford clearly superior.

Regardless of my opinion, the De Trafford wines more than held their own in this tasting, and I suspect that many fell for the more generous style that this label presents.

Something to ponder, however, is that while many individual tasters were convinced of their preferences in purely sensory terms, few appeared to be able to discern which wine was which when it came to producer. Either tasters equated weighty and powerful with expensive and hence confused the De Trafford with the Latour or local consumers simply like what they’re used to and opted for the more fruit-driven style of De Trafford over the less obvious Latour. A positive result for the little guy, nevertheless.

Christian Eedes attended the De Trafford versus Latour comparative tasting as a guest of Wine Cellar.


Wine Cellar has a wide selection of older De Trafford wines. For more information, visit www.winecellar.co.za