Ratings & Tasting Notes:

96 points — Burghound (Allen Meadows, January 2017)
Meadows reaches for fireworks in a glass to describe the super-fresh nose, which offers a broader range of elements and better aromatic depth than the Richebourg alongside it, with more red fruit than dark. The flavours are imposingly powerful and tautly muscular, with outstanding mid-palate density and excellent delineation across an intensely mineral-infused, youthfully austere and very firmly structured finish that goes on and on. He suggests it will drink reasonably well after fifteen to eighteen years, but wants twenty to twenty-five for full maturity.

96 points — Wine Advocate (Neal Martin, February 2017)
Martin records the picking on 17, 18 and 20 September at 32 hectolitres per hectare, with bottling between 1 and 25 April 2016. He finds a startling bouquet of dark berry fruit, bay leaf, jasmine tea and autumn leaves, multi-faceted and mercurial, brown spices emerging with aeration — a touch more forward than he expected. The palate is medium-bodied with great structure and fine grip, a slightly more masculine La Tâche whose fruit spectrum shifts from red to black, closing with a lovely lift. 1,929 cases produced.

96+ points — Vinous (Stephen Tanzer, March 2017)
Bright medium red. Ineffably complex, pure scents of fresh raspberry, cherry, rose petal, peppery spice, crushed herbs and mint. Almost surprisingly silky on entry, then sweet but restrained and even a little ungiving through the middle, with pungent red berry and mineral flavours conveying electric energy. It builds slowly and inexorably with air toward an expansive finish lifted by a hint of green pepper. Tanzer expects it to need a good fifteen years to show its inherent flesh and richness, but rates it for finesse even now.

94 points — Decanter (William Kelley, February 2016)
An exotic bouquet of raspberry, orange peel, nutmeg, clove and classy new oak introduces a rich, powerful wine with a supple, expansive attack, a deep and concentrated mid-palate, and a fine-grained but firm tannic footprint on the long, penetrating finish. Kelley finds it as ample and powerfully structured as the domaine’s Richebourg, but with more polished tannins, more completely enrobed in fruit at this early stage.

Cult Wines International Notes:

Domaine de la Romanée-Conti farms its holdings from Vosne-Romanée under long-established biodynamic practice, at yields among the lowest in Burgundy. La Tâche is the larger of the domaine’s two monopoles at just over six hectares. The vineyard in its present form was settled by a 1936 court ruling that folded the neighbouring Les Gaudichots into the La Tâche appellation, giving the domaine sole ownership of the enlarged cru. Where Romanée-Conti is famously reticent in youth, La Tâche is the extrovert of the cellar — darker, more overtly powerful, and for many collectors the more thrilling wine to drink before either reaches full maturity.

2014 tested Burgundy’s growers before rewarding them. A cool, uneven flowering, summer hail and pressure from spotted-wing drosophila made for an anxious season until a dry, breezy September restored the crop’s health. Across the Côte de Nuits the result was a vintage of freshness, tension and classical mid-weight proportions rather than opulence. The domaine picked its La Tâche on 17, 18 and 20 September at 32 hectolitres per hectare and bottled it in April 2016, with 1,929 cases produced. The wine is taut and firmly structured: dark berry fruit, bay leaf, jasmine tea and autumn leaves giving way to red fruit, rose petal, peppery spice and crushed herbs over an intensely mineral core, closing long and youthfully austere. Reviewers agree it wants time — fifteen years at a minimum, and closer to twenty-five for full maturity.

Bottle Size:

750 mL

Storage History:

Always stored on its side in a climate-controlled cellar.

Condition:

Minor label imperfections, but overall outstanding condition.

Please note: The condition of the bottle you will receive is accurately reflected by the one shown in the images.

The individual bottle number has been deliberately masked in our photographs. Every DRC bottle carries a unique serial number, and published images of that number are routinely harvested by fraudsters — both to produce convincing counterfeits and to advertise wine which a fraudulent seller doesn’t possess. Masking this number also protects its eventual owner from similar fraud. The number is fully intact on the label and unobscured on the bottle itself. If requested, unmasked photos can be provided to the buyer after purchase and prior to shipping.