2020 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Romanee-Conti Grand Cru, Cote de Nuits, France (750ml)

TASTING NOTES:

Young Romanée-Conti is sometimes enigmatic, with its greatness obscured. If this bottle was any indication, however, the potential of the 2020 vintage is already on display. This wine is immensely aromatic, with remarkable depth on display in the ripe blackberry fruit with notes of earth, spice, and a complex savoury, almost gamey note that echoes on the impressively lingering finish. The texture is suitably firm and substantial, but there is astonishing elegance and freshness for such a torrid vintage, especially since this site was picked before the rains on 27 August. This is everything you want Romanée-Conti to be. 6,003 bottles were produced.

-Decanter, 100 pts.

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.

-Wine Advocate, 100 pts.

 The ripe yet still cool nose is exuberantly floral and gloriously spicy on the aromas of essence of poached plum, cassis and exotic tea. The caressing and succulent mid-palate somehow manages to be at once highly seductive yet almost painfully intense and imposingly scaled while exuding of the big-bodied and incredibly dense flavors that flash evident minerality on the massively long and impeccably well-balanced finale where the only nit is again suggestion of warmth. As one might reasonably expect, this is presently firmly austere, and firmly tannic, which confirms that it is indisputably destined for a very long life as it should see its 50th birthday in excellent shape. Brilliant! I would point out that based on the way this showed in the context of the decade, the 2020 is likely the best RC since the fantastic 2010

-Burghound, 99 pts.

The 2020 Romanée-Conti Grand Cru was picked on 26 and 28 August at 28.7hL/ha. As usual, I leave it for 5-10 minutes to open in the glass, predisposed not to show everything upon first pour. It reveals lovely dark berry fruit, sous-bois, clove and haunting sea spray notes (picture yourself walking along the pebble beach at Whistable and the tang of shucked oyster shell in the salty air). The palate is medium-bodied with very fine and pliant tannins. Harmonious to a tee with a perfect silver bead of acidity, long and languorous, this fans out with ineffable ease on the finish. Stunning. 500 cases produced. Tasted at Corney & Barrow’s annual in bottle tasting in London.

-Vinous, 99 pts.

Romanée-Conti is always a step above, delivering floral, strawberry, red currant and cherry. With incredible finesse, it’s ethereal, complex and long.

-Wine Spectator, 99 pts.