Romanée Conti 1987 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (1 BT)

Romanée Conti 1987

Domaine de la Romanée-Conti

Côte de Nuits, Grand Cru

Level into the neck, slightly scuffed labels, wine-stained vintage neck label, scuffed capsule, signs of seepage

In 1760, the Prince de Conti bought the lower part of La Romanée, and a myth was born. The de Villaine and Leroy families acquired Romanée-Conti in 1850 and they still own and run the Domaine jointly. It is interesting that in 1850 Romanée-Conti was estate bottled - then this ceased for a period and restarted in 1911. Thus, the essence of Romanée-Conti was captured but, in my view, never tamed! It is a wild, extraordinary wine, unpredictable and constantly mutating as it matures, but always true to its indubitably great self. 

The care lavished on Romanée-Conti is shown to all the wines of the Domaine, but the breed and refinement in the taste of Romanée-Conti would point to an indefinable “something extra” in this 1.80 ha plot. Tradition is respected (Romanée-Conti is always vinified in wooden vat number 17 which dates from 1862), but not blindly revered for its own sake. Short pruning, organic fertilizer, low yields, high average age of vines, late picking, selection of grapes, long fermentation with natural yeasts, 70-100% vin de presse added to give quality tannins and good acidity, new Tronçais oak barrels from wood the Domaine dries itself, almost no racking (and then only by gravity), fining with 3-4 egg whites per cask only in some years according to the character of the vintage, no filtration - all this is taken for granted. But Romanée-Conti is more than the total of a mass of intricate manoeuvres - it is the pure silk and intoxication aromas and flavours that appear, as if by magic, from mere marl and limestone. Serena Sutcliffe, MW

WA 95

1 bt (cn)