There is ripeness and some cooked fruit preserve on the nose – I was tempted to guess 2003. Fills the mouth with round, lingering flavours and still quite cunky tannins. Very long. Seems fresher than a relatively recent (2 years…) Romanée St.Vivant from the same vintage.
The forward nose delivers a whiff of iodine over many savoury notes. Plenty of texture here, the acidity remains rather understated. Fruit seems to be of the preserved variety – some pear perhaps – that said, this is a savoury and very mineral wine which has little to do with fruit. Interesting but not a wine I would covet.
Medium-plus colour, both deeper and younger looking than the Bonnes-Mares. The nose also has much more depth of an obvious oak note. Soft and concentrated with just a slight lift of the acidity. Apparently much more compact in the mid-palate than the Bonnes-Mares but with equal length. This is clearly a ‘younger’ and more powerful wine but just a little less enticing and balanced than the Bonnes-Mares today. Re-reading this sounds harsh, but it was a very good wine indeed that I’d be happy for you to open for me
I’ve rarely experienced this from young DRC wines, but today this is clearly, aromatically more impressive than the La Tâche – it’s deeper, has more concentrated fruit at the core, and what fruit! In the mouth the stunning fruit continues, creamily-edged and slowly creeping into a haunting finish. There is a faint tannin emphasis but the tannin melts before the finish. There is beautifully packaged ripeness here, but delivered in such a way you would never class as negative. By far the most authoritative young Romanée-Conti I ever met, but in part that’s due to the tightness of most of its stable-mates.
A heavy nose of ample cream-edged fruit and new oak melds well with a fairly forward smoky, stemmy note. The plate lacks for a little poise with a ‘whoosh’ of fruit that is admittedly borne on lovely acidity. There’s plenty of oak on the finish too – though it’s a long finish. The scent clings well to the glass. Overall the aromatics, and to a certain extent the flavours too, are rather sweet, facile and vanilla-oak edged – indeed the ripeness is not even shaded by Romanée-Conti – but it’s characterful and quite athletic too. Needs 2-4 years to shed that facile, oak-influenced character but this has all the material to become really super.
The aromatics have a much deeper aspect – mulberry and savoury oak, a little spice and only faint stems – much more ‘adult’ than the obviously riper Echézeaux. In the mouth it’s very tight, but at the same time, more intense. The tannin just shows a little astringency in the mid-palate, the impression is just a little less fresh than the Echézeaux too. The finish is a slow diminuendo and less impressive today than that of the Echézeaux. The aromatics are the only dimension that clearly outpoints the previous wine – clinging beautifully to the glass. This has great potential, but today has quite a sullen aspect.
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