Ratings & Tasting Notes:

99 points — Burghound (Allen Meadows, January 2023)
A reserved but overtly floral nose with a beautifully layered array of hoisin, soy, clove, anise, black cherry coulis, sandalwood and exotic jasmine and pekoe tea. The texture of the rich, impressively concentrated, broad-shouldered flavours is super-sleek, exuding an almost pungent minerality on a clean, bright and exceptionally persistent finale, with only a touch of backend warmth as a quibble. Meadows notes that despite very firm structure, the mid-palate density means it could be approached after twelve to fifteen years, while remaining capable of at least twenty-five years of improvement and possibly thirty. He calls it quite simply exquisite.

99 points — Wine Advocate (William Kelley, January 2023)
Kelley calls it magical, mingling mulberries, cherries and cassis with bergamot, black tea, liquorice, exotic spices and peonies. Full-bodied, rich and resonant, with a broad attack, huge mid-palate amplitude and a supple, seamless, elegantly muscular profile — a remarkably powerful but also profoundly complex young wine he describes as both intellectually and sensually thrilling.

98 points — Decanter (Charles Curtis MW, July 2023)
Curtis writes that the 2020 incarnates everything wonderful about the vintage: ripe, exuberant and approachable, yet packed with potential and the substance for long ageing. It shows the same exotic red fruit and floral notes it displayed from barrel and is already giving great pleasure, with great concentration and length. He suggests it may, like the 2009, be ready early and never shut down. Picking began on 30 August and finished on 2 and 3 September after a short break for rain. 14,844 bottles were produced.

98 points — Jasper Morris (Inside Burgundy, October 2022)
No denser in colour than its neighbours. The bouquet introduces nobility, as always in a slightly sterner register, offering no easy access. The stems are apparent on the palate, bringing crushed dark strawberries and white pepper ahead of the roses, with a fleeting impression of tar and roses and a good thread of acidity running through. Morris finds much more red fruit here, and perhaps some iron oxide — fitting, he notes, for a cru whose soil runs redder.

98 points — Vinous (Antonio Galloni, March 2023)
Galloni finds it very typically La Tâche, with plum, hoisin, spice and blood orange all amplified in what he describes as an explosive, massively backward wine needing fifteen to twenty years in the cellar to start drinking well. Whole clusters lend an exotic spice quality that sits front and centre. The warm growing season, he writes, has taken every La Tâche signature and amplified it, producing a dense, explosive Burgundy that will thrill its owners for many decades.

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, 6.06 hectares held outright. The vineyard in its present form was settled by a 1936 court ruling that folded the neighbouring Les Gaudichots into the La Tâche appellation. 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.

2020 was among the hottest and earliest growing seasons on record in Burgundy, with drought and heat concentrating small berries and harvest beginning in August across much of the Côte. The domaine started picking its La Tâche on 30 August, broke for rain, and finished on 2 and 3 September; 14,844 bottles were produced. The vintage’s warmth amplified the cru’s signatures rather than blurring them: hoisin, soy, clove, anise, black cherry coulis, sandalwood and pekoe tea over mulberry, cassis, bergamot and peony, with whole-cluster spice front and centre. The palate is rich, broad-shouldered and super-sleek, its pungent minerality carrying a bright, exceptionally persistent finish. Critics differ sharply on when to open it, but agree it will improve for twenty-five years and more.

Bottle Size:

750 mL

Storage History:

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

Condition:

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.