Our Provenance Guarantee
Purchase with confidence. All of our wines are selectively sourced and thoroughly inspected for authenticity and signs of poor storage. Accepted bottles are preserved in our climate-controlled cellar until they reach your doorstep. We have no storefront and no walk-in traffic, so nothing is moved or handled between inspection and shipping.
The bottle you see photographed is the bottle you receive (or fundamentally identical when multiple bottles are listed), and our commitment to you is that it arrives as represented. If it doesn’t, we want to hear from you.
Ratings & Tasting Notes:
97 points — Decanter (January 2018)
Showing plenty of promise and perfume, with a generous violet fragrance. Superbly fruited, with sweet ripe red cherry, savoury cola, minerals and spice subtly and sensually combined, and satin-textured tannins carrying deceptive levels of grip. Every element is exquisitely refined and integrated, the fruit building to a mouthfilling crescendo on the mid-palate aided by fine acidity. Very graceful, precise and compelling. Harvested 9 to 11 September at 26.26 hl/ha, bottled 21 to 24 February 2017, 1,398 cases produced.
96 points — Burghound (Allen Meadows, January 2018)
More restrained still, though aggressive swirling eventually coaxes out a gorgeously broad-ranging nose — floral and spicy, with red and dark currant, Asian-style tea, anise, clove, cinnamon and sandalwood. The pure, naturally sweet, precise and beautifully detailed medium-bodied flavours hold their focus from the mid-palate through a dazzlingly long, palate-staining linear finish that Meadows says simply goes on and on. Silky as the palate impression is, there is plenty of supporting structure, and he is clear it needs a long sleep in a cold cellar before it is ready. Textbook Romanée-St-Vivant.
96 points — Vinous (Stephen Tanzer, January 2018)
Bright, full red. A sensational perfumed nose showing a musky element of wildness alongside dark cherry, raspberry, wild strawberry, cocoa powder, brown spices and earth. Tanzer describes a compellingly rich, horizontal wine that spreads out to coat every square millimetre of the palate — quite firmly built, even a little youthfully imploded, but already an attention-grabber. It finishes with a firm but refined dusting of tannins and outstanding rising length.
95 points — Wine Advocate (William Kelley, February 2018)
Showing superbly from bottle, bursting from the glass with a dramatic and expressive bouquet of rose petal, violet, raspberry and spicy red cherry that has already absorbed its framing of new oak. The palate is full-bodied, expansive and supple, its frame of fine-grained tannins cloaked in a deep core of vibrant fruit and asserting itself only on the long, penetrating finish. Kelley calls it a superb Romanée-St-Vivant, one that nips at the heels of the domaine’s Richebourg in this vintage. Cropped at 26 hectolitres per hectare, harvested 9, 10 and 11 September.
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. It is the largest owner of Romanée-St-Vivant, holding just over five of the climat’s nine hectares — the former Marey-Monge parcel, which the domaine farmed from 1966 and bought outright in 1988. The cru sits lowest on the slope of the great Vosne grand crus, and its wine is correspondingly the most perfumed and least muscular in the cellar: lighter-framed, floral, silken, and for many drinkers the most purely elegant thing the domaine makes.
2015 was a warm, dry vintage in the Côte de Nuits, producing small berries, deep concentration and unusually ripe tannins, and was ranked almost immediately among the finest years of the modern era. The domaine picked its Romanée-St-Vivant from 9 to 11 September at 26.26 hectolitres per hectare, bottled it in February 2017, and produced 1,398 cases. The wine is restrained but broad-ranging: violet, rose petal, red and dark currant, Asian tea, anise, clove, cinnamon and sandalwood over sweet red cherry, wild strawberry and savoury cola. The palate is pure, precise and beautifully detailed, its satin-textured tannins carrying more grip than first appears, closing dazzlingly long and linear. Every reviewer makes the same point: there is real structure beneath the silk, and this needs years in a cold cellar before it shows everything.
Bottle Size:
750 mL
Storage History:
Always stored on its side in a climate-controlled cellar.
Condition:
Outstanding condition 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.
