a fine wine tasting archive
6 notes
2003 was the summer Europe cooked. White Burgundy from that year was written off almost before it was bottled: too much alcohol, no acidity, drink it up. Twenty-three years on, the acidity was the first thing to arrive in the glass. Bottle 1,709 of 2,871.
Grand cru fruit from a second pass through the vines, declassified to premier cru under the founder's name. 4,511 bottles in 2011, and most never left France — born privileged, travelling under a modest card.
The label states it plainly: 3,330 bottles harvested, and this is number 1,319. From 0.67 hectares of sixty-year-old vines — the smallest production at the domaine, and for decades DRC's only white.
The words Marey-Monge on a DRC label are the trace of a two-century argument over who owned Romanée-Saint-Vivant. The 2014 is the vintage where the vineyard's own character — perfume over power — was easiest to hear.
Échézeaux is the DRC wine people meet first; Grands Échézeaux is the one that explains why the hierarchy exists. The 2014, tasted at six years old, was all coiled structure and saline red fruit — a wine opened a decade before its argument.
2008 was a summer that frightened Burgundy — grey, damp, and late. Then a dry north wind arrived in September and rewrote the vintage. At twelve years, La Tâche was still a young wine, and the year's nervous energy was exactly the point.