Ratings & Tasting Notes:

97 points — Decanter (Charles Curtis MW, February 2022)
Curtis notes that co-manager Bertrand de Villaine has often evoked the savoury nature of the Grands Échézeaux from the domaine’s 3.53-hectare plot down-slope from its Échezeaux. To Curtis’s palate the wine showed more influence from the whole clusters — a freshness and a slightly rustic hint of menthol and earth — though de Villaine assures him whole-bunch use is consistent across the range. He suspects the wine may be closing down slightly, showing less of the lush dark fruit it had from barrel, but finds the length and complexity a testament to its quality.

97 points — Jasper Morris (Inside Burgundy, November 2021)
The colour is a little denser and richer than the Échezeaux, the bouquet more backward yet more complex — Morris finds it hard to pin specific fruits to it. Weight builds on the nose, all red berry with no black notes. The wealth of fruit attacks quickly and then stays, fresh roses jostling among lush but still precise fruit flavours. The structure holds its role and keeps this powerful wine fresh, and the volume swells magically across the second half of the palate with darker notes emerging.

96 points — Burghound (Allen Meadows, January 2022)
Once again the nose is super-floral, with ripe but airy and elegant aromas of various dark berries, star anise, dried tangerine peel, warm earth and a plethora of spice elements. As is virtually always the case with this cru, there is better size, weight and muscle to the broad-shouldered flavours, delivering stunningly good length on a compact, beautifully balanced finish. Meadows finds superb complexity and calls it breathtakingly good — magnificent — while warning, as always with this wine, to allow ample bottle age, since the supporting tannic spine is very firm.

96 points — Wine Advocate (William Kelley, January 2022)
More reserved than the Échezeaux, though far from forbidding. Blackberries and raspberries mingle with exotic spices, orange rind, smoked duck and forest floor. The palate is full-bodied, rich and concentrated, with broad structural shoulders supplied by ripe, powdery tannins. Kelley finds it layered and muscular yet remarkably seamless and integrated at this early stage, concluding with a long, sapid finish.

96 points — Vinous (Neal Martin, February 2022)
Martin records the picking on 19 and 20 September at 28 hl/ha, and finds a tangible step up from the Échezeaux in concentration and complexity. The fruit is slightly darker, with blackberry and raspberry, wild hedgerow and touches of bay leaf, in beautiful definition. The palate is medium-bodied with lace-like tannins and a beguiling sense of symmetry and poise, more dimension than the Échezeaux, its architecture closer to Richebourg. It fans out wonderfully toward the finish, velvety smooth, with a judicious touch of spice lingering on the aftertaste. 884 cases produced.

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. Grands Échézeaux lies in Flagey-Échezeaux, hard against the wall of the Clos de Vougeot, and the domaine is its largest owner with 3.53 hectares sitting down-slope from its Échezeaux parcels. It has always been the more serious of the two Échezeaux crus — denser, more structured and longer-lived than its larger neighbour — and it remains the clearest and most affordable route into the domaine’s house style.

2019 was a hot, dry and exacting season. Spring frost and a difficult flowering cut the crop sharply, and summer heat concentrated what remained, yet the wines held their acidity and lift rather than tipping into weight. The domaine picked its Grands Échézeaux on 19 and 20 September at 28 hectolitres per hectare, and 884 cases were produced. The wine is reserved but not forbidding: super-floral, with dark berries, blackberry and raspberry, star anise, dried tangerine peel, bay leaf, orange rind, warm earth and forest floor, plus a rustic hint of menthol from the whole clusters. The palate is broad-shouldered and muscular yet seamless, its lace-like tannins carrying a poised, sapid finish of stunning length. Critics place it a clear step above the Échezeaux and closer in architecture to Richebourg, while agreeing its very firm tannic spine calls for ample bottle age.

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.

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.