1998 La Tâche Grand Cru

The DRC '99s were among the clear standouts of my November tastings: concentrated, highly aromatic and built to age. DRC essentially harvested in two stages: they began by picking thoroughly ripe grapes from their old vines on September 20, the first legal harvesting day for the grand crus, then went back through the vines again a few days later. According to Aubert de Villaine, the skins were healthy, tannins were completely mature, pHs were higher than those of the previous year, and the wines are likely to be bottled two or three months earlier than the '98s. It is a crop of wines, he says, that will always be seductive. The powerful, more perceptibly tannic '98s, in contrast, have evolved more slowly, says de Villaine. They have a very interesting future but need time, "like children whose very good intellectual potential can take a long time to reveal itself." It was the '99s that glittered on my recent visit.

Following strict selection, DRC produced just 25 hectoliters per hectare in 1998. As with so many '98s from Vosne-Romanee, the wines from this domain are powerfully structured and developing at a glacial pace. "But our wines always need 15 years," noted co-owner/director Aubert de Villaine. "Even the '97s are not for drinking young." Except for the Richebourg, which had not yet been racked, all the '98 barrels that I sampled had been racked prior to the '99 harvest. The more fragile '97s were bottled barrel by barrel to avoid any additional aeration (normal practice at this estate in recent years has been to bottle in six-barrel lots, assembling the wine in small tanks).