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Domaine
de la Romanée-Conti 2006
Domaine
de la Romanée-Conti is one of the world’s great wine estates, and
so it’s always exciting to taste the new releases each year. The
2006 vintage was quite a difficult one in Burgundy, but with DRC,
there isn’t such a thing as a bad vintage. When the wines are
selling for such enormous prices (the Echezeauz is £895 for 6 in
bond; the Romanée-Conti is a cool £7795 for 6 in bond), incredible
attention to detail in both the vineyard and cellar is feasible.
A
word about prices. Even at these heady levels, demand for these
wines outstrips supply. It is to the great credit of the Domaine and
Corney & Barrow that they don’t simply raise prices to the
maximum level they can get. Instead, they take great care to
allocate wines with a focus on ‘the private customer and as a
consumer rather than a speculator’. Anxious not to create a grey
market for these wines, the bottle numbers are recorded with each
sale, and customers are asked to give Corney & Barrow first
refusal if they should need to sell their wines in the future.
I
had a chat with the Domaine’s co-owner, Aubert de Villaine, who is
a total star: he's polite, thoughtful and patient, and is one of
those rare people who is a wine legend, yet when you interview them
they don't make you feel they are doing you a huge favour. I asked
him about the 2006 vintage.
'The
wines show that one cannot speak of great vintages or small vintages
any more', says Aubert. 'Take the last 10 years: each has had its
own character. 2006 was more difficult, certainly, than 2005, but,
finally, with a small yield and a lot of care at sorting you have a
maturity - both phenolic and sugar - that is at the same level as
2005. The difference is in the style of the wines'.
‘2005
is much more symphony-like, while 2006 is more like chamber music
with a different concentration, and perhaps more transparency than
2005. The effect of this transparency is probably more of an
expression of the terroir, which is more preserved in the wines than
in 2005, where the vintage speaks more loudly.’
Aubert
says that being organic is very important, and has had an effect on
the quality of the wines. ‘20 years ago I would have said that
organics doesn’t bring something to the quality of the wine; it is
just good for the soil and for people’, explains Aubert. ‘But
today I’d say the contrary. Being organic for years in the
vineyard brings a plus to quality – it brings finesse. You reach a
certain finesse of maturity with organics that you don’t reach as
effectively with other methods.’
The
domaine has been organic for 25 years, and part biodynamic for a
while. With the 2008 vintage it is fully biodynamic. Yet Aubert
thinks the big quality gain is switching to organics from
conventional farming, not the move from organics to biodynamics. ‘We
chose to go fully biodynamic because it was complicated to have just
one part of the vineyard in biodynamics. Frankly, I don’t see a
superiority in the quality of the wine. A lot of people have gone
directly from conventional viticulture to biodynamics and they see
what we saw going from conventional to biodynamics’.
‘What
interests us in biodynamics is the use of plants to try to reduce
products such as copper which aren’t sustainable. We want to
verify what some people who have used it for a while say: that there
is a development of very deep roots which allows the vine to fight
better by itself against diseases’.
Vosne-Romanée
1er Cru Cuvée Divault-Blochet 2006
Aromatic, fresh cherry fruit nose with some notes of herb and
earth. The palate is cherryish with real elegance, some fruit
sweetness and subtle complex earthiness under the fruit. There’s
real harmony here: very smooth with a long finish. Complex, ripe and
delicious. 92/100
Echézeaux
2006
A step up. Beautifully elegant nose: smooth, pure and beguiling
with dark cherry and sweet plum fruit, as well as some complex spice
and earth notes in the background. Very smooth, slightly sappy fruit
on the palate with lovely elegance. Sweet and focused with silky
structure. Great balance here. 94/100
Grands
Echézeaux 2006
Beautiful aromatics here: fresh, pure, bright cherry fruit with
a lovely subtly sappy green lift that frames the sweet fruit
beautifully. The palate has real elegance and purity, and is focused
and fresh, showing super-smooth cherry fruit with some minerally,
slightly earthy tannic structure underneath. Transparent style.
95/100.
Richebourg 2006
Taut, multilayered nose showing sweet, focused red berry fruits
with real elegance and beautiful purity. There are also some spice
and herb notes, seamlessly integrated. I really like the
liqueur-like quality to the fruit. The palate is super-elegant with
good concentration and some silky-yet-firm structure under the
really pure red fruits. This is mouthfilling, dense and complex with
brilliant elegance. There’s some substance here. 96/100
Romanée-St-Vivant
2006
Fresh, focused red fruits nose with notes of cherries and herbs.
The palate is fresh and a bit sappy with bright cherry notes and
nice fleshy fruitiness. It’s really elegant and bright with lovely
fruit. Delicious, but no doubt this will be majestic with time. It
just seems to be missing something right now. 93/100
La
Tâche 2006
Quite a beautiful, aromatic nose: it’s super-elegant with
sweet cherry fruit, as well as some notes of chocolate and roast
coffee from the oak. The palate has a lovely density of elegant ripe
cherry and berry fruit with spice, tar and mineral characters.
Beautiful depth here: long finish with some tannic structure.
Brilliant. 95/100
Romanée-Conti
2006
Hauntingly elegant nose with smooth, pure cherry fruit with
liqueur-like richness. Sweet, with hints of spice. The palate shows
lovely pure, dark cherry and sweet plum fruit with a super-elegant
savoury structure. Really long finish with earthy hints and a bit of
spiciness. Quite beautiful. 94/100
Wines tasted 01/09
Find these wines with wine-searcher.com
Domaine de
la Romanee Conti releases
2001,
2002, 2004, 2005,
2006, 2008
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