Domaine de La Romanée-Conti has comparatively low yields anyway but, like all Burgundy properties, its annual yields have been hugely variable over the past couple of decades, related largely to the weather extremes consequent upon climate change. From 2008 on, generous were 2017, 2014, and 2009; a healthy average were 2020, 2018, 2016 (with the exception of the severely frosted Echézeaux and Grands-Echézeaux); variously paltry, niggardly, meager were 2019, 2015, 2012, 2010; pitiable, in both cases, were 2021 and 2008, each producing a bare half crop.
Perrine Fenal (co-director of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti with Bertrand de Villaine) had the following to say about their initial perceptions of 2022: “Too much! Too warm, too many grapes, too much sugar, too many barrels—more than ever before, there were three tiers!—a scorching summer …” And yet, and yet, alongside this profusion in so many respects, with the longest harvest ever (August 30 to September 13) she also describes so much joy in the juice and the wines: concentration, lusciousness, ripeness without heaviness, a clear terroir imprint, too: “We have never seen this level of quality from a vintage of such abundance.”
As I do every year now, each wine note is preceded by a set of production figures for comparative purposes, first with the immediately preceding vintage, and then within the context of a recent cross-section of three meager years (2010, 2012, 2015), two generous years (2014, 2017), and one with a healthy average (2016). Not scientific but illuminating all the same.
Drinking dates
I have mentioned before that Corney & Barrow, the UK’s Domaine de la Romanée-Conti agents, always recommend rather earlier drinking dates than I do—based on considerable experience, they are at pains to point out. And it’s true, the wines are so beautifully made, and these days so finely textured from the word go, that they will indeed reward an early broaching. But if you can afford to wait those few more years, I would suggest the rewards will increase exponentially, in terms of bouquet especially—and those, when fully developed, are so myriad, subtle, and seductive—but also in terms of overall ease, harmony, polish. A reminder that one of the defining aspects of fine wine is the ability to age and improve with grace and dividend. Gratification delayed, gratification doubled? And, as I have also said before, it’s a sort of “When are you, were you, will you be perfectly developed?” question. Answer me that! Wines have different stories to tell at different moments in time. As do we.
Related
My prejudices aired, for me one of the most eye-opening takeaways from a remarkable recent Domaine de la Romanée-Conti dinner, with six wines (ranging from 2019 back to 2005), was just how rewarding these wines can be in their relative youth. It is also, of course, very much a question of taste. Not to say availability! Start pulling those corks?
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti: The growing season
The key to both the quantity and the quality of 2022 was the quantity of rain, and in particular the moments in the viticultural year when it arrived. It was warm in April and May, and flowering was early and rapid, with no coulure or millerandage—simply the indication of a large, early harvest. June was hot, there were heatwaves in July and August. But … there had been plentiful rain in December, topping up the water table; there was benign rain in the middle of flowering; there was particularly beneficial heavy rain during the third week of June, as there was again August 15–18. All perfect slaking junctures! And then the fine weather continued up to, and throughout, the harvest. At which point both vines and fruit were in magnificent health, absolutely disease free.
Corney & Barrow’s managing director, Adam Brett-Smith, noted that: “Throughout the growing season and even after the harvest, the leaf canopy remained resolutely green.” Retired director of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Aubert de Villaine, made almost exactly the same comments on the September vineyards in 2015: “Going through the vineyards in September, I was struck by their beauty, and by the perfect health of the vines, their leaves, their fruit. Any potentially stressful dry periods during the year were immediately counter-balanced by brief, relieving periods of rain.” And he called the 2015s “a once-in-a-generation vintage.” Could he have even envisaged the proportions, the scope, the stature of 2022 within the next decade? Let alone 2019 or 2018. Whither next?!
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Vintage style and quality
As in Bordeaux, so, too, in Burgundy, the years since 2015 have been remarkable for their consistent high quality. Since then, there has not been a disappointing red Burgundy harvest from the quality point of view. And the Domaine’s wines, in their very different ways (and yields apart), have seen a series of quite exceptional years. Beneficiaries, for the moment anyway, of climate change. To take just the three vintages prior to 2022, here are a few adjectives from my in-bottle reviews describing their style, their quality:
2021 (a pitiable yield – half a crop): Paucity, moderation, beauty. What they lack in power and opulence, they make up for with finesse, delicacy, subtlety, and a deliciously lip-smacking vitality.
2020 (a healthy average yield): Another astonishing year of outstanding quality—as wondrous as the very grand 2019s, in an utterly different way. Power was not a word that came readily to mind … nor sap, density, mass, matter. These are teasing, exquisite, ethereal wines.
2019 (a paltry yield): Poise, polish, density—a very grand vintage. Characterized by richness, depth, density … sap, mass, matter. The most extraordinary vintage I can recall tasting over the past 20 years.
While each is a year of exceptional quality, there is a very clear, contrasting stylistic pairing within this most recent quartet of bottled years. The inner two, 2020 and 2021, resemble each other in finesse, delicacy, an almost ethereal fingerprint; the flanking two, 2019 and (as we see below) 2022 are marked instead by mass, density, substance, structure …abundance.
2022 (the most abundant yield ever?): A vintage of a grandeur to more than match 2019. What marks it out for the Domaine, though, is the unprecedented conjunction of extraordinary quality with extraordinary quantity. It is a year that, in terms of style, quality, and quantity is simply swimming in superlatives, where it is difficult to overstate the quality of the wines, and just as impossible to avoid extravagant language, such is the character of the year. They have the luxuriance, the lavishness, the exceptional core sweetness, the enriching tannin grain of exceptional refinement that all derive from copiously sun-nourished grapes; a clear solar expression … aerial, skyward ripeness. But they also voice the soil’s cold cradling of the vines’ roots; cooler, earthbound impressions suggestive of limestone, clay, minerals, spice. And in this sunniest of years, they have a remarkable freshness of delivery, too. The wines seem to me to be of a majestic, a regal bearing, which singles them out even in the context of the other recent great solar vintages. They are wines of a most complex orchestration, with all the density, substance, and structure of 2019 (as the most obvious immediate comparison) but expressed in an even more virtuoso configuration, with magnificent complexity and extraordinary persistence.
For the few lucky enough to have the opportunity, what a pair 2019 and 2022 will be, to delight in next to each other.
The wines
I mentioned above that this is a year simply swimming in superlatives, and with descriptions, almost inevitably, to match. Words will fail, of course. These are wines to defy anything more than a fundamentally impressionistic description. Notes such as these reveal our inability to describe with mere words the detail of what we experience with our senses. And as for the colorless, arid straitjacket of numbers … well, ridiculous. But I offer mine. As I must.
Every year this tasting serves as a conspicuous demonstration of the marked quality gradation that exists within the grand cru appellation itself. It is all the more striking with 2022, where each wine is such an outstanding expression of the possibilities of its particular origin.
Tasting 2022 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti
Corney & Barrow, London; February 5, 2025
2022 Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru
(52hl/ha [5hl/ha in 2021]; 1,757 dozen [165 in 2021]; 14% ABV)
Pale lemon-yellow; dense, fresh, persistent, lemon-edged white peach and a subtle minerality to smell, glassfilling, ample, seductive … a wonderful nose that calls out to be drunk immediately. Rich and vital, a perfect combination of very clear ripeness and defining acidity—if just as clearly not a “cooler” vintage character (not that of the 2020, for example); this is deep, rich, sweetly ripe, abundant, and seductive, instantly appealing, long, and juicy, but also complex, detailed, tenacious across the palate, intense, penetrating, aromatic, and with great minerality and wonderful aromatic persistence. A grand, complete, and succulent expression of the terroir, an almost Bâtard-character richness in 2022, such that Bâtard might be, at this stage anyway, one’s first port of call if tasted blind! Wonderful already, but with the acidity to keep for the medium to long term. Wonderful, too, that there is so much. Now to 2040+. | 97
2022 Vosne-Romanée Premier Cru Cuvée Duvault-Blochet
(228 dozen; 14% ABV)
Mid-red; mineral-backed, freshly ripe red cherry to smell; medium-full, concentrated, with a fresh to vital acidity and a fine, gently firm tannin, a lovely, top premier cru balance; freshly ripe to taste, long, racy, complex, gently energetic and remarkably persistent for its premier cru status. Possibly because it is a blend of declassified grands crus! This cuvée is made occasionally, from the Domaine’s young vines in abundant, high-quality vintages and named after the Domaine’s 19th-century founder. A lovely combination of concentration, intensity of flavor, and freshness. 2028–38+. | 93
2022 Corton Grand Cru
(40hl/ha [5hl/ha in 2021]; 946 dozen [105 in 2021]; average 2010–17: 413; highest since 2009: 707 in 2009; 13% ABV)
Deep, youthful red; a dense, soft, red- and black-fruit nose, persistent and perfumed; rich, concentrated, gently vigorous in acidity, with a very fine, gently firm tannin, a medium- to long-term balance; this is ripe, ample, elegant, deeply yet freshly sweet, with a ripe red- rather than black-cherry character, succulent, complex, and with very fine length, which is an aromatic combination of deep fruit and mineral impressions. The breadth and succulence notwithstanding, there remains the clear, underlying imprint of Corton firmness. A fine grand cru. 2030–42+. | 94
2022 Echézeaux Grand Cru (43hl/ha [14hl/ha in 2021]; 1966 dozen [636 in 2021]; average 2010–17: 1,195; highest since 2009: 1,543 in 2009; 13% ABV)
Mid-purple-red; dense, very ripely red cherry in character on the nose, mineral-backed, too; an impressively rich impression for this wine, full, gently tannic, and with a distinctly fresh, defining acidity; deep in flavor and with an unusual depth for Echézeaux, both sweetly ripe and very fresh, long and tenacious, subtly mouthcoating and, as with the Duvault-Blochet and the Corton, very long in fruit and aroma to finish. A bit more “softly sweet” than the Corton at a very similar quality level. A splendid iteration. Will the tannins harden a bit? Maybe … 2032–42+. | 94
2022 Grands-Echézeaux Grand Cru(43hl/ha [21.5hl/ha in 2021]; 1,566 dozen [742 in 2021]; average 2010–17: 991; highest since 2009: 1,290 in 2017; 13.5% ABV)
A dense red- and black-fruit nose, with a pronounced fruit core and lovely density, concentrated and persistent, filling the glass as it sits, remarkable already just to smell; an immediately impressive constitution: rich, tautly fresh in acidity, very finely tannic, beautifully balanced; clearly richer and more “packed” than the Echézeaux, a long, close-knit palate, deep in flavor, with an unusual sense of “grain” for the cru, searching, beautifully black-fruit-sweet in character and very long and aromatic to finish. A remarkable, a particularly special, fairly long-term Grands-Echézeaux. 2034–45+. | 95
2022 Richebourg Grand Cru(43hl/ha [11.5hl/ha in 2021]; 1,211 dozen [355 in 2021]; average 2010–17: 848; highest since 2009: 1,311 in 2009; 13.5% ABV)
Dark red; dense, relatively closed, black-fruit ripe and strongly “mineral” to smell, as discernably “clay”-marked as the Romanée-St-Vivant is “limestone”-emphatic. Rich, generous, subtly muscular, all very freshly defined, and framed by a firm, fine tannin, absolutely classic Richebourg proportions and character; here, too, is that remarkable, and so very 2022 it seems, sweetness of flavor, with more depth and reach than the RSV, and therefore appropriately placed afterward in the tasting order today. This is a wine of considerable density, super-long across the palate, full of gentle sinew, its great fruit core mineral-saturated and with superb aromatic persistence. A magnificently rewarding Richebourg, a wonderful expression of the vineyard. This will need time to yield, to blossom, to bouquet, to gain absolute polish. It will of course be greatly gratifying earlier, but I’d wait at least a decade from now. 2035–50+. | 97
2022 La Tâche Grand Cru(38hl/ha [8.5hl/ha in 2021]; 2,227 dozen [579 in 2021]; average 2010–17: 1,386; highest since 2009: 2,082 in 2017; 13.5% ABV)
Deepish red; that very specific, and wonderful, mineral-backed, super-ripe red cherry to smell, an impression of succulence even on the nose, voluminous and heady in the glass; and a splendidly capacious early constitution: abundance, substance, enriching tannins, and delicious freshness besides; yet effortless, for all this profusion. A deep core fruit, red to freshly sweet black in spectrum, deeper, sweeter, broader even than the Richebourg, with a magnificent length of flavor, a completely absorbing complexity and, of course, a finale, a residual echo to match. A La Tâche of complex orchestration, of glorious depth and intensity, but beautifully balanced, too, by the delicacy and transparency of the best Pinot Noir. To extract so much with no sense of excess whatsoever is a great tribute to the winemaking. This will be memorable, of course, whenever broached—as indeed it is today. But time will enhance. 2032–50+. | 98
2022 Romanée-Conti Grand Cru(37hl/ha [20hl/ha in 2021]; 694 dozen [403 in 2021]; average 2010–17: 432; highest since 2009: 657 in 2014; 13% ABV)
Dark red; such a richly subtle combination of both fruit and terroir to smell, very ripe red cherry at its heart, but mineral-drenched, too, and where you notice the whole-bunch herbal character more clearly than in the other wines this year; a quintessentially, harmoniously, perfectly balanced wine, particularly copious in fruit presence for Romanée-Conti, freshly poised in acidity, the tannins a barely perceptible, enriching textural grain; deep and sweet, with a breadth that surpasses even the La Tâche. This is immediately full of gently racy inner energy enveloping your palate, a combination of intensely yet delicately sweet fruit, of spice, of perfume, of resonance and textural presence. So full of “what-may-be” in the mouth, of an intensely sensual pleasure, that it is impossible not to be emotionally stirred. And, as with all wines of such quality, you exhaust the liquid before you can fully absorb all the extraordinary magic it has to offer. Effortlessly, transparently beautiful. A magnitude of quality almost impossible to describe, and a wine to stand alongside the 2019 and 2020. Leave, ideally, 15 to 20 years. If you can. Especially as there is so much else to enjoy beforehand. 2035–55+. | 99–100
