Domaine de la Romanee-Conti - Romanee-Conti Grand Cru 2020

Jasper Morris - Inside Burgundy

Adrian van Velsen - vvWine.ch

Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The 2020 Romanée-Conti Grand Cru is a wine of real grace and purity. Unfurling in the glass with aromas of raspberries and blackberries mingled with sweet spices, violets, peonies and a subtle hint of wintergreen, it's full-bodied, ample and satiny, with terrific concentration and a suave, seamless, layered profile, gliding over the palate. It's as intensely flavorful as the more muscular, broader-shouldered La Tâche, but it's more elegant and sensual. It's also the wine in the cellar that's the least marked by the style of the vintage.

Aubert de Villaine had been barely able to contain his enthusiasm for the 2020 vintage when I saw him last year, and looking at the 2020s from bottle with Perrine Fenal at the domaine this year only confirmed why. This is a striking vintage for the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, which is both very stylistically distinctive—and in that sense, even a little atypical—but which also shows the estate's different terroirs very clearly. The 2020s aren't as sensual and red-fruited as the 2019s; they're deeper-pitched and spicier in profile and will demand more patience, even if both vintages are likely to prove similarly long-lived. The domaine's white wines are also especially successful this year. I've also included tasting notes on the nascent 2021s from barrel, but it's the in-bottle notes, tasted at the domaine in ideal conditions, that are as ever the most important commentaries on each vintage.