2007 Romanée-Conti Grand Cru

I was intrigued by the comments of cellarmaster Bernard Noblet on the relative merits of DRC's 2008s and 2007s. Noblet described the 2008 growing season as difficult and requiring a severe sorting of the fruit for both rotten and underripe grapes. "We literally did two harvests because the flowering had been so drawn out," he told me. Cool weather during the harvest generally resulted in a good ten days of cold soak before the fermentations began. Extraction was then difficult, according to Noblet. The wines were vinified with 60% to 80% whole clusters, and the team has kept a bit of the lees to fatten the wines, which Noblet told me needed more structure. Interestingly, he described the 2007s here as more classic and more typical, and more strict than the 2008s. (A year earlier, Aubert de Villaine had described the 2007s as ethereal wines, and a bit less classic and soil-inflected than the 2006s.) While I'm sure that these wines will enjoy a long life in bottle, a number of them were awfully sexy when I tasted them in November. Except where indicated, the 2008s, had been racked about ten days prior to my visit. Incidentally, DRC plans to make two wines in 2009 from their purchase of the grand cru vineyards of Domaine Prince Florent de Merode in late 2008. As crop levels were tiny in '09, there will be an old-vines cuvee and another bottling from the rest.

Aubert de Villaine describes 2007 as an ethereal vintage, and thus probably not for people who look for fleshiness in their Burgundies. He is confident that what he describes as "the early vegetal aspect" shown by the 2007s will evolve into fascinating perfume with 15 years of bottle aging. Potential alcohols here were in the 12.5% range when the domain harvested during the first week of September, and the wines were chaptalized less than a half degree simply to prolong the fermentations. Vinification was done with about 50% to 60% of the stems, or a bit less than usual. Villaine considers the DRC 2006s to be more classic wines. "They're ethereal and they have strong soil tones, and there's plenty of flesh too," he said.