Domaine de la Romanée-Conti

The Domaine de la Romanée-Conti is without question the greatest red wine estate in Burgundy - a statement echoed throughout the winemaking world and most significantly throughout Burgundy. Its very unanimity creates an intensity of speculation and myth about the estate - all of which disperse against Aubert de Villaine's simple assertion that in wine-making there is more to be learned in what not to do than in what to do.

The History
The Vineyards
The Winemaking
The Wines
The Holdings
Wines by this Producer

If the winemaker makes the wine, it is the soil that makes a Romanée-Conti. Therefore the cultivation must be in total obedience to the great terroir - and the winemaking by trying to be very much like the Pinot Noir itself, a translator of the terroir. This philosophy has enormous attraction because it is rooted in simplicity and common sense - that the vineyard allows the maximum potential of quality, and that this may be diminished, equalled but never augmented in the cellar.

The History

The story begins 752 years ago when the monks of the Priory of St Vivant, sited on a hill behind Vosne-Romanée, sold a tiny vineyard of 1.8 hectares called Cros des Clous which they had received some two centuries previously from the Dukes of Burgundy.

It was the de Croonemberg family who changed this name from Cros des Clous to Romanée and who were the beneficiaries of its eventual sale in 1760 to Louis-Francois de Bourbon, Prince de Conti, first cousin of Louis XV of France. As a result of the French Revolution, the vineyard was sold at auction in 1793 to a Parisian, Nicolas Defer, it was again sold in 1819 to Julien Ouvrard, Napoleon's controversial banker, for FF 78,000. In 1869 Romanée-Conti was acquired by Monsieur Duvault Blochet who built up most of the holdings now owned by his direct descendants the de Villaine family, and by the Leroy/Roch families.

The vineyard of La Tâche was acquired by the Domaine in 1933. Romanée-Saint-Vivant was managed by the Domaine from 1966 and in 1988 this parcel was purchased outright. The Domaine de la Romanée-Conti now owns in entirety the vineyards of Romanée-Conti and La Tâche, half of Richebourg, a third of Grands Echézeaux, a seventh of Echézeaux and more than half of Romanée-Saint-Vivant. Its only white wine is the incredibly rare Le Montrachet of 0.67 hectare out of a total vineyard area of just under 8 hectares.

The entire Domaine is co-directed by Aubert de Villaine and Henri-Frédéric Roch.

The Vineyards

The vineyards are grouped around the village of Vosne-Romanée on well drained slopes facing east and south-east. The soil is iron-rich limestone on a base of rock and marl with vines lying around 800ft above sea level. The average age of the vines is very high - around 44 years - and the vineyards are cultivated organically.

Soil supplements are limited to compost made from crushed vine roots, grape skins and residues from fermentation. To avoid compacting the soil with the use of tractors, horses were re-introduced to cultivate the vineyards of Romanée-Conti and Le Montrachet. Five hectares in La Tâche and Grands Echézeaux are now being cultivated biodynamically whereby the individual vines are treated with special natural preparations and according to a strict lunar timetable.

Yields are very low at an average of 25 hl/ha (the Grand Cru rendement is 35 hl/ha). In other words, it takes the produce of three vines to produce one bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Yields are kept low through severe pruning early in the season, and green pruning (éclaircissage) in July/August with a 'passage de nettoyage' completed immediately before harvest, to cut out substandard grapes. At harvest time, the grapes are sorted into small baskets and individually examined for health on triage tables, before the winemaking begins.

The Winemaking

Minimum intervention in the winery allows an entirely natural vinification. There is no de-stalking of the grapes, which undergo a very long cuvaison - up to a month - and fermentation is carried out at relatively low temperatures.

The Domaine has its private supply of oak from the Troncais forests. 100% new oak is used and maturation time depends on the quality of the vintage. New oak is used to eliminate any possibility of contamination which might result from older casks, and to marry the unique qualities of the fruit.

There is no filtration and if racking off the lees is required this is done by gravity from cask to cask, never pumped. If the wines need to be fined, then fresh eggs are used. The wines spend sixteen to twenty months in wood before bottling. Both assemblage and bottling are done by gravity and usually cask by cask.

The Wines

The partnership of Aubert de Villaine and Henri-Frédéric Roch has taken the Domaine onto an even higher plane in producing wines by which all other Burgundies are judged. The tiny vineyards, the very old vines, the low yields, the meticulous husbandry of the vineyards and above all the deeply rooted belief in terroir make the wines both sought after and immensely scarce. The hallmark is concentration, great depth of structure, unbelievable length and supreme elegance.

The two Echézeaux are big wines - ripe and fatly fruited, with Romanée-Saint-Vivant more elegantly perfumed and with a drier finish. The Richebourg is rich and sweet and broadly structured with huge length. La Tâche has even greater intensity and depth of colour as a result of its older vines. The apogee of the Domaine is Romanée-Conti itself, the same 1.8 hectare vineyard purchased from the Priory of Saint Vivant over 750 years ago. It is both rich, concentrated and of supreme elegance and justifiably the most expensive wine of the Domaine.