Domaine de la Romanee-Conti - La Tache 2014

The 2014 La Tâche Grand Cru was picked on 17, 18 and 20 September at 32 hectoliters per hectare, bottled between 1 and 25 April 2016. It has a quite startling bouquet: dark berry fruit, bay leaf, hints of jasmine tea and autumn leaves. It delivers multi-faceted aromatics, a mercurial bouquet, brown spices emerging with continued aeration in the glass. It is a tad more forward than I expected. The palate is medium-bodied with great structure and fine grip. This is a slightly more masculine La Tâche and replicating its performance in barrel, the fruit spectrum shimmies from red to black (incidentally, exactly as I observed when I tasted it in barrel). There is a lovely lift on the finish that leaves you with a piquant kiss on the cheek. This is wonderful. 1,929 cases produced. Tasted February 2017.

Before commenting upon Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s wines, I should re-emphasize as I did last year, that tasting this illustrious domaine’s wines from barrel is for academic purposes. These 2014s will not be offered to consumers until they are in bottle and of course, they will inevitably change and evolve in the intervening period, as all Burgundy wines are prone to do between barrel and bottle. On the other hand, I personally find it educational to chart their progress from prenatal wines in barrel, through their respective élevages, then not only in bottle after release, but (fingers crossed) during their lifetime. This is why I always post mature bottle notes in my “Up From The Cellar” series. I do hope readers gain vicarious pleasure from these barrel notes, some insight from the commentary that will complement the article composed when I eventually taste them again in bottle. I tasted through these wines with the stocky but affable Bertrand de Villaine, who is now taking more and more daily responsibilities from his uncle Aubert. It was one of the most interesting barrel tastings that I have performed in their hallowed cellars. That does not imply they were the greatest that I have ever tasted. Bertrand kindly left me to my own thoughts as I tasted through the reds, but requested my thoughts afterwards. I felt that this was a septet of mischievous children, teasing me by mimicking each other’s personalities. La Tâche and Romanée-Conti had decided to swap, the former so ineffably discrete, Romanée-Conti “putting it out” there and letting it’s hair down. Picture an Oxford don doing the conga. Richebourg decided to align itself with La Tâche and seemed to accentuate it tertiary qualities whereas Romanée-Saint-Vivant was more like Grands Echézeaux, and so damn seductive that one had to resist temptation and call over to Bernard Noblet, a lanky lighthouse what with that lamp strapped around his head, and order him to bottle it immediately. Do you see what I mean? It made the tasting…fun. You almost felt like ordering the “children” to stop their folly and return to their usual personalities. Aubert de Villaine, who greeted me over in his office before we serendipitously bumped into each other a couple of hours later in a sandwich bar, presented me with his usual poetically written summary of the growing season, but I’ll save that until the wines are in bottle. For now, just so that you can compare with other growers, the 80 pickers unsheathed the secateurs on September 16 in Corton and finished in Echézeaux on September 26.