Ratings & Tasting Notes:

98 points — Burghound (Allen Meadows, January 2019)
Meadows finds the highly perfumed nose the most floral-inflected of the range, with a cool, restrained array of violet and rose petal scents joined by an extraordinary group of spice elements over the essence of redcurrant. The mouthfeel of the imposingly scaled, powerful flavours is robust yet refined, with as much minerality as the Richebourg lending lift to an almost painfully intense and extravagantly long finish. He notes a hint of backend warmth that doesn’t materially detract from the overall harmony, underscores that this is a very firm effort needing decades to shed its tannic shell, and calls it genuinely brilliant.

98 points — Wine Advocate (William Kelley, January 2019)
More reserved than the Richebourg and Romanée-St-Vivant, the 2016 unwinds in the glass with wild berries, liquorice, rose petal and smoked duck, framed by a touch of cedary new oak. The palate is full-bodied, rich and velvety, with a deep, concentrated but tight-knit core, its firm chassis of fine-grained structuring tannins cloaked in succulent fruit and underpinned by juicy acids, closing long and reverberative. Kelley calls it a stunning La Tâche in the making, but also one of the more reticent wines in the range, and says it will demand bottle age.

98 points — Vinous (Neal Martin, February 2019)
Martin records the picking on 24 and 25 September at 31 hl/ha, the highest yield of the five crus that year. He describes a sublime bouquet of blackberry, briar, crushed limestone, cracked black pepper and a little oregano — extremely complex, with focus so exquisite he suggests one could sit and nose it all day. The palate is beautifully balanced, its spicy red fruit framed by filigreed tannin that belies the backbone beneath, building in a gentle crescendo while retaining complete control. He finds it less fruit-forward than the 2015, with an insistent grip and a captivating sense of completeness that should carry it three or four decades. 1,814 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. 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.

2016 is Burgundy’s survivor vintage. A catastrophic late-April frost swept the Côte d’Or, followed by a cold, wet spring and heavy mildew pressure, before a hot, dry summer from late June turned the season around and delivered fruit of unusual purity. The domaine picked its La Tâche on 24 and 25 September at 31 hectolitres per hectare, and 1,814 cases were produced. The wine is the most floral of the range: violet and rose petal over redcurrant, blackberry, briar, crushed limestone, cracked black pepper and a note of oregano, framed by cedary new oak. The palate is imposingly scaled but refined, its fine-grained tannins cloaked in succulent fruit and underpinned by juicy acids, closing intensely and extravagantly long. This is a firm, reticent La Tâche that will need decades to shed its tannic shell.

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.

Rear label has a small rip as shown, otherwise 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.