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Romanée Conti 2016

Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Burgundy, France

Domaine de la Romanée-Conti
Burgundy France
  • 100
    Points
  • The 152 best
    of 3 290 954
    wines globally
  • 11 Pros of
    11 recommend
    this wine
650 100
  • Taste
  • Moment

  • Country ranking ?

    126

  • Producer ranking ?

    14

  • Decanting time

    3h

  • When to drink

    from 2025

  • Food Pairing

    Porcini Mushroom Risotto with Gorgonzola Cheese

The Tb points given to this wine are the world’s most valid and most up-to-date evaluation of the quality of the wine. Tastingbook points are formed by the Tastingbook algorithm which takes into account the wine ratings of the world's best-known professional wine critics, wine ratings by thousands of tastingbook’s professionals and users, the generally recognised vintage quality and reputation of the vineyard and winery. Wine needs at least five professional ratings to get the Tb score. Tastingbook.com is the world's largest wine information service which is an unbiased, non-commercial and free for everyone.

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DRC 2016: PERFECTION FROM IMPERFECTION

The 2016 vintage from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti has been released and although the results ended up surpassing expectations after a difficult year, there are some noticeable absences from the usual line up.

The 2016 vintage in Burgundy was famously difficult and wrought havoc with yields as frost, hail and mildew in the first half of the year laid waste to the potential crop and then a heatwave in...

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The Story

 “As if, in this square of earth, the gods had bequeathed us a memory of the fascinating vestige of a timeless perfection.” — Richard Olney. The wine of Prince de Conti, she is velvet, seduction and mystery. It is the most Proustian of all great wines.

 

Domaine de la Romanée-Conti is without question the most famous estate in Burgundy and arguably the greatest, producing some of the best wines in the world. It is probably one of the mos...

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Wine Information

While the excellent 2015s were born out of a superb vintage and growing season, the 2016s were the prodigy of a tumultuous season, born out of tumult and even despair at great cost. The winter of 2015-2016 was very mild with none of the usual frosts or snow to cleanse the vineyards of latent pests and diseases. Budburst was early in April and the Spring was also the wettest on record with 516mm (20.31 inches) of rain between January and May ma...

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Vintage 2016

2016 RED BURGUNDY VINTAGE REPORT

The 2016 harvest was, of course, later for Pinot Noir in the Côtes de Nuits, and some climats had different productions depending on how they weathered the frost of April 26th. In this report I will talk about each of the producers’ allocations to illustrate the variations between the totals from the 2015 and 2016 vintages. I will also seek to give you an idea of the style of the 2016 red wines versus those ...

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Tasting note

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Written Notes

An expressive Romanee-Conti with great exuberance, intensity and complexity. This is a brilliant vintage for DRC and the Romanee-Conti in this vintage is suprisingly open at this stage. The wine combines everything one would want in a great Burgundy wine – delicacy, purity, depth, complexity, length and seductive flavors.

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  • 99p

Bright red-ruby. A touch of reduction to the spectacularly complex aromas of black raspberry, mocha, game bird, earth and violet. Thick and sweet but utterly primary and barely hinting at the complexity to come. And yet this amazingly suave, silky wine already shows outstanding focus and spine, not to mention uncanny depth. Fleshier in the early going than La Tâche, but this wine will also need long cellaring to fully express itself. As we tasted this wine, Aubert de Villaine noted that, as a general rule, there was more millerandage in 2016 than in 2015.

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  • 98p

The 2016 Romanée-Conti Grand Cru was picked on September 25 at 24hL/ha. As usual, I allowed it five or six minutes to open in the glass. It is a very subtle Romanée-Conti, more discreet than the 2016 La Tâche, but then you become entranced by its spellbinding purity and grace. It gradually builds aromatically, augmenting the black fruit with red, and developing scents of wild hedgerow and freshly tilled soil - almost a pastoral element. The palate is medium-bodied with extremely precise and fine tannin and notes of wild strawberry, cranberry and crushed limestone. This feels very harmonious, the texture silkier than the La Tâche, displaying just a touch of bay leaf and black pepper toward the sustained finish, which gains depth and grip with aeration. Exquisite, though I suspect the La Tâche will challenge it for supremacy. 440 cases produced. Tasted at Corney & Barrow’s annual in-bottle tasting in London.

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  • 98p

Vines aged 57 years. 24 hl/ha. Harvested 25 September. Bottled 19 April 2018. 440 dozen produced.
Lightish ruby. Darker fruited than the Richebourg, but still red fruited. There’s a refined restraint at first then a seductive perfume starting to show at the heart of the aroma. The whole-bunch woodland freshness just lifts the wine and accentuates its soaring fragrance as it opens up. The palate almost surprises in its power and intensity, peppery and gently spiced but also that darker and more rocky/mineral dry texture and finish. So fresh, chewy in the most refined way possible. As it opens, the spice and the dustiness combine and is perfectly in harmony with the fruit and structure. Dark, almost savoury finish. Goes on forever.

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  • 98p

5 barrels made. Always a bit paler than La Tâche.
Lots of sinew on the nose; less sweet, more refined than La Tâche. Heady. Complete. Great balance. Lots to chew on but it’s sui generis. Wonderful length and it sways on the palate and builds extraordinarily on the very end. Magical.

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  • 96p

Just a point away from perfection in 2016, but what a wine this is, even at this young age. Serious, dense, complete and self-assured, it's a Grand  Cru that knows where it's going and will age effortlessly for 30 years or more. Liquorice, tobacco pouch and wood bark aromas segue into a palate that's sweet and complex, with tarry tannins and a core of glorious red fruit sweetness. 2036-50

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  • 99p
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Information

Origin

Vosne-Romanée, Burgundy

Other wines from this producer

Bâtard-Montrachet

Corton-Charlemagne

Corton Grand Cru

Echézeaux

Grands Echézeaux

La Romanée-Conti Grand Cru

La Tâche

Les Gaudichots

Marc

Montrachet

Richebourg

Romanee Saint Vivant

Vosne Romanée

Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Cuvée Duvault Blochet

Inside Information

After the success of the 2015 vintage at Domaine de la Romanee Conti which Aubert de Villaine described as one of the three most successful vintages ever at the domaine, the wines from 2016 had a seemingly impossible act to follow. In the end, some incredibly beautiful wines were produced … “an unexpected success, which now places 2016 amongst the most perfect vintages of these past few years.” ~ Aubert de Villaine.

100 points Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

The 2016 Romanée-Conti Grand Cru is a worthy successor to the profound 2015, wafting from the glass with aromas of wild berries, violets, peony, dark chocolate, cinnamon and exotic spices. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, ample and satiny, with an ineffable sense of completeness, searing concentration without weight, a vibrant, indeed animating line of acidity, and a long, expansive finish that concludes with a judicious touch of mouthwatering bitterness. Wines like this are the foundation of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti's reputation.

99 points Allen Meadows - Burghound

 Here the nose is very much in that young RC mode of 'don't bother me' as it requires aggressive swirling to grudgingly reveal smoky and overtly floral suffused aromas of plum, cassis, spiced tea and sandalwood. The gorgeously sleek medium weight plus flavors possess a wonderfully seductive mouthfeel along with plenty of minerality that also suffuses the splendidly long and beautifully well-balanced if youthfully austere finale. Like the La Tâche this spherical effort is also very much built to age and is a wine that is going to require the better part of three decades to realize its full potential. While it is very much fraught to be making projections about all-time great vintages of RC when there have been so many over the storied history of this wine, I would say that the '16 is RC quite simply breathtakingly good and for me it's the wine of the vintage. 

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