2000 La Tâche Grand Cru

With our warmer climate of recent years, we have to be careful not to get surmaturite said Aubert de Villaine. With organic farming, the season of vegetation is shorter and we get earlier ripeness. In two out of three years, we face a battle between ripeness and rot," he added. In 2001, rot was not a factor but we had less phenolic ripeness than in 2000. It was necessary to harvest carefully. We kept the fruit from the first passage through the vines, but the second pass actually brought less-ripe fruit that we ultimately declassified." Because the domain practices more careful selection than ever before, the lees are cleaner today. We previously experimented with retaining some lees, but since '99 we keep the fine lees with all of our wines throughout their elevage said Villaine. The Domaine de la Romanee-Conti continues to bottle in six-barrel batches, which means that some bottle variation is inevitable. I had a few problematic bottles among the 2000s I tasted, although it was not obvious whether the issue was slightly bad corks or simply shock from the bottling last spring ("a rebellion against imprisonment" is how Villaine put it). Villaine describes the 2000s as pure, solid wines that can be enjoyed now ("why not?") or laid down for seven or eight years.

Aubert de Villaine, always a tough critic of the DRC wines, told me that 1999 marked "the first time we couldn't have done anything better." In fact, this crop of wines has been sensational since day one, with superb concentration for the vintage and wonderfully silky textures. Sugar levels here were higher in 1999 than in 2000. In the latter year, DRC started the harvest on the first allowable day. "We're getting ripeness here very early," said de Villaine. "We don't have to lose acidity by waiting for more sugar." Potential alcohol levels were around 12.5% in 2000, and a little chaptalization was done to prolong the fermentations. Strict sorting of the fruit was done at the harvest: fully 25% of the crop was thrown out, declassified or sold off in bulk.