Domaine de la Romanée Conti Romanée Conti Grand Cru

2016

BH 99+: Here the nose is very much in that young RC mode of 'don't bother me' as it requires aggressive swirling to grudgingly reveal smoky and overtly floral suffused aromas of plum, cassis, spiced tea and sandalwood. The gorgeously sleek medium weight plus flavors possess a wonderfully seductive mouthfeel along with plenty of minerality that also suffuses the splendidly long and beautifully well-balanced if youthfully austere finale. Like the La Tâche this spherical effort is also very much built to age and is a wine that is going to require the better part of three decades to realize its full potential. While it is very much fraught to be making projections about all-time great vintages of RC when there have been so many over the storied history of this wine, I would say that the '16 is RC quite simply breathtakingly good and for me it's the wine of the vintage.

2015

BH 99+: Sometimes, try as I might, words fail to communicate adequately those few transcendent experiences where a wine is just so amazing that it's impossible to capture it. The 2015 Romanée-Conti would be one of those experiences so you will simply have to accept the limitations of the written word. The breathtakingly beautiful nose is restrained to the point of being almost mute yet aggressive agitation eventually reveals an exotically broad-range of highly perfumed floral, spice, tea and incense-like nuances. The opulently textured, concentrated and equally mineral-driven flavors accentuate the perfumed character of the nose as the inner mouth perfume just adds to the what is roughly akin to an sensorial assault, all wrapped in a finish that lasted for seemingly several days as I had no trouble recalling it over the next 48 hours. If there's any imperfection that I could detect, there is a hint of warmth but otherwise, this is pretty close to perfect. The word spectacular comes to mind but then again so does brilliant, fabulous and splendid. You get the idea, pretty damn remarkable.

2013

BH 96: This is not as deeply hued as the La Tâche though it rarely ever is. The kaleidoscopically spicy, floral and complex nose however is a good deal more expressive, indeed almost surprisingly so given that it typically is quite reticent. In the same fashion as the La Tâche one aspect that is immediately clear is that 2013 is an emphatically powerful vintage for RC with its dense, serious and muscular middle weight plus flavors that retain terrific delineation on the extraordinarily pure and refined finish that seems to go on and on. The intensity does a slow build from the mid-palate to the explosive finale yet for all the robust power and intensity the overall impression remains harmonious and entirely Zen-like. This is, in a word, gorgeous.