Ratings & Tasting Notes:

97 points — Vinous (Neal Martin, February 2020)
Martin records the picking on 6 and 7 September at 34 hl/ha, with bottling between 25 March and 24 April. Echoing Aubert de Villaine’s own assessment, he finds a more introverted La Tâche that bides its time in the glass, its fruit slightly darker than the Romanée-Saint-Vivant with added blueberry, violet and background moorland scents that need ten to fifteen minutes to emerge. The medium-bodied palate offers lithe tannins against a very fine line of acidity, with more body and grip than the Richebourg or Romanée-Saint-Vivant and wondrous piquancy on a loamy finish. What it lacks, unlike the two preceding vintages, is a never-ending aftertaste — this La Tâche, he writes, does its job but prefers not to linger. 2,082 cases produced.

96 points — Burghound (Allen Meadows, January 2020)
Meadows rates La Tâche the most aromatically compelling wine in Burgundy short of a great Musigny, and finds the 2017 ultra-spicy, exuberantly fresh and impressively broad, with rose petal, exotic and herbal tea, lavender, plum, violet, sandalwood, soy and a whiff of hoisin. A beguiling underlying tension runs through the supple, almost easy-going mid-palate before the deceptively forward flavours tighten on a dusty, exceptionally stony and saline finish of excellent depth and superb persistence. He calls it a La Tâche of contrasts: the mid-palate suggests early accessibility, but the firm core of tannins makes clear that extended keeping is needed to see it at its peak.

96 points — Wine Advocate (William Kelley, January 2020)
Kelley finds it soaring from the glass with a captivating, beautifully integrated bouquet of exotic spices, rose petals, raspberries, cherries and blood orange mingled with cinnamon and coniferous forest floor. The palate is full-bodied, deep and multidimensional, with a tightly coiled core that marks it out as the most muscular wine in the cellar, showing considerable concentration and largely concealed structure. A dramatic young La Tâche with plenty evidently held in reserve, and appreciably more presence than any of the wines that preceded it in his tasting.

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.

2017 restored Burgundy’s balance after the frost-ravaged 2016: a warm spring, a generally healthy growing season, a return to normal volumes and an early harvest. The domaine picked its La Tâche on 6 and 7 September at 34 hectolitres per hectare, its most generous yield in years, and 2,082 cases were produced. This is the cru in its lighter, more open register — the palest wine in the domaine’s 2017 range, floral and scented, with rose petal, fresh leather, blueberry, violet and peat smoke, whole-bunch spice, racy acidity and a saline edge over succulent red berry fruit. The palate is medium-bodied with lithe tannins and a fine line of acidity, carrying more grip than the Richebourg or Romanée-Saint-Vivant alongside it. Reviewers describe a wine of charm, tension and detail rather than sheer monumentality, whose firm tannic core still rewards patience.

Bottle Size:

750 mL

Storage History:

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

Condition:

Please note: The bottle shown is the exact bottle being sold.

Outstanding condition. Rear label has a few minor imperfections as shown.

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.