Thanks to the incredible generosity of an old friend and one of his oldest comrades, I was able to taste some bottles I would otherwise never get to experience. Unlike six years ago, when most of this same group convened, the bottles of DRC Romanée-Conti were sound. They were the highpoint, being the most distinctive, but a La Tâche gave them a run for their money.
We started, however, not with DRC, but La Romanée from the ‘70’s and 80’s, bottled by Bouchard, vinified, I believe, by Regis Forey. As I am sure many know, La Romanée is the smallest Burgundy AOC and adjacent to Romanée-Conti.
Each of the bottles was opened right before drinking, decanted, and then passed around for pours from the decanter. Aeration was up to the individual taster and took place in the glass. I gave my pours a fair amount of time; I only finished drinking all the wines at the end of the tasting, which would have been at the three hour mark for the first pour. The only wine that I think suffered, that could have used more time, was, oddly, the last and oldest.
1978 La Romanée
This bottle on opening seemed the most unsound: raisiny nose and harsh metallic taste. It really transformed in the glass over time. Though it remained the lightest of the wines, it developed into a transparent aged beauty, with a core of lingering red fruit and a slight tea accent. Great transparency, through which sweet fruit still shined. None of the wines, including this one, were browning—surprisingly good color for all of them, including the ’49 below. The ’78 La Romanée read the oldest, finally, in a good way.
1982 La Romanée
The 1982 had more going on in the nose than the ’78 when opened, kirsch and vosne spice. It showed bigger and younger than the ‘78 and many other tasters—we were 8 overall—preferred it. There was a harsh note in the finish that I could not get past. A bigger and younger wine than the ’78 but lacked the ’78 purity. Both wines showed similarly to one another and also had profiles adjacent to the R-C’s that followed.
1982 Romanée-Conti
The 1982 was bringing it right out of the gate. The bouquet featured explosive vosne-spice, strawberry and other red fruit. On first taste I wrote “delicious”; the finish went on and on. The wine has a roundness, a self-contained quality while at the same time being complex, always inviting further tries to grasp what’s in the glass. Captivating.
1971 Romanée-Conti
The nose was less expressive at first then the ’82. From the get-go, the ’71 was amazing to drink. (I wrote “amazing.”) What surprised me about both R-C’s was just how deeply pleasurable they are, while also being so profound and multifaceted—as if a great cali cab had somehow been compressed into the pinot space. The finish was endless. Perhaps a little less discernible spice than the ’82, with a slight hint of tomato skin in addition to the red fruit and spice. In both DRC’s, but more in the ’71, I get just the slightest hint of some umami-ish oil–hard to identify, since, the whole is so integrated, “spherical,” as Jeremy Holmes once put it, I think.
1971 La Tâche
This, the first of two Le Tâche, almost equalled the DRC. In the nose and mouth, it is a somewhat burlier, slightly more blackfruited wine. But it is also a wilder wine; a line of explosive spice runs up and down its length. It is taut, electric, edgy, while the R-C remains a magnificent, stately, never ending pleasure bomb. The Le Tâche did not change much in the glass; you could possibly hold this longer, somewhat unbelievably, though obviously no need.
1949 La Tâche
The nose on this was, unfortunately, totally unexpected: distinctly vegetal, specifically asparagus. A little red chili spice was also discernible. On tasting, to me, it just seemed very closed, not entirely unpromising—intensity was there and the flavors that distinguished its bouquet were not really evident. The nose calmed down a bit with air; the vegetal asparagus aroma receded. Still the wine never showed its stuff—nor perhaps had any to show, though maybe it just needed more time to wake up?
For me the ranking was: 1) ’71 DRC; for 2) and 3) I go back and forth between’71 La Tâche and’82 DRC; I, but not others, would put the ’78 La Romanée at 4); the ’82 La Romanée at 5). The ’49 La Tâche: hors de combat.
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