Domaine de la Romanée-Conti - Romanée-Saint-Vivent 2018

The 2019 Romanée-St-Vivant Grand Cru wafts from the glass with breathtaking aromas of raspberries and strawberries mingled with bergamot, Indian spices, peonies and rose petals. Full-bodied, vibrant and perfumed, it's finer boned than the more muscular Grands-Échézeaux, with a bright spine of acidity and beautifully refined tannins, concluding with a long, penetrating finish. Striking for its purity and elegance, my handwritten notes include the phrase "pure sensuality."

This was a particularly memorable tasting at the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Revisiting the bottled 2019s was thrilling, as these are some of the most sensual, dramatic young wines I've ever tasted at this address; and the young 2020s, tasted from barrel (with the exception of several cuvées that had been recently racked), show immense potential too. A few small evolutions have been made in the cellars in the last few years, with Tonnellerie La Grange increasingly in evidence alongside historically dominant François Frères on the red side of the ledger, and barrels from Séguin Morey, Damy and Taransaud to be found in the new room devoted to the domaine's white wines. Bottling is also a touch earlier than in the past.

"Did you taste the 2019s yet?" asked Aubert de Villaine when we met in September to discuss the 1980 vintage—subject of a forthcoming retrospective report in these pages. "You must taste them, they're showing so well," he continued; and his enthusiasm was easy to understand several weeks later when I returned to the cellars, this time with Aubert's nephew, Bertrand de Villaine. Observing that the vines proved remarkably resilient despite the warm and dry growing season and that it was the dry north wind that defined the weeks before harvest that concentrated the grapes' sugar content (as well as their acidities) rather than the effects of heat, de Villaine feels that the wines are characterized by "sapidity," and experiencing their captivatingly mouthwatering alliance of the floral, the fruity, and the carnal, it's hard to disagree. This is a striking set of wines, uniting some of the charm and expressiveness of years such as 2017 and 2009 with the depth and seriousness of a vintage such as 2015. While on paper 2019 is evidently what the French call "solaire," and though analytically I imagine the wines pHs may be far from low, the wines' fruit tones are notably vibrant: something that de Villaine (and the present author) find a very reassuring for the future of Burgundy in an era of climate change. Of course, the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti remains a bastion of traditional winemaking, but a few subtle evolutions are worthy of note: Winemaker Alexandre Bernier, de Villaine noted, opted to perform more pump-overs and fewer punch-downs in 2019 to limit extraction, and beginning in 2019, the Domaine's Corton saw 100% new oak, it having been at last deemed capable of benefiting from such an élevage. While François Frères remains the dominant cooper, and by some margin, I did catch a glimpse of barrels from Tonnelleries Séguin Moreau, Vicard and La Grange in the cellar and tasted both La Tâche and Romanée-Conti out of barrels from both François Frères and the latter—a fascinating exercise, needless to say.

Robert Parker Wine Advocate