Bottle 1,319 of 3,330
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Montrachet Grand Cru 2006
- Producer
- Domaine de la Romanée-Conti
- Appellation
- Montrachet Grand Cru
- Grapes
- Chardonnay
- Tasted
- 12 March 2025
The label does the introductions itself: 3.330 Bouteilles Récoltées, Bouteille N° 01319. Three thousand three hundred and thirty bottles that year, and this was the one thousand three hundred and nineteenth — a name tag, more or less.
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti is so completely identified with its reds that it is easy to forget that until Corton-Charlemagne joined the range in 2019, the domaine made exactly one white wine: this one. The parcel sits at the Chassagne end of Montrachet, 0.67–0.68 hectares assembled by Henri Leroy across three purchases — 1963, 1965 and 1980 — and planted with vines now past sixty years old. From that scrap of land come roughly three thousand bottles a year, the smallest production of anything the domaine makes. It is less a line in the DRC range than a small annual event, which is precisely why each bottle carries its own number.
An Underrated Year
2006 rarely makes the lists of the century’s great white Burgundy vintages — which is exactly why it keeps being called underrated. It was a year of opulent, exotically-toned fruit, wines that opened early and generously rather than demanding decades.
In the Glass
The colour surprised first: a pale gold, far less heavy than a nearly twenty-year-old white has any obligation to be. The nose opened on the exotic register — butterscotch, honey, a curl of smoke — then layered in yellow apple, roasted lemon, apricot and a saffron-like spice, with oak and vanilla staying respectfully in the back row.
The palate was thick and buoyant, fruit rich enough to read as faintly sweet — and underneath it, a hard mineral floor that refused to let any of that opulence sprawl. The finish turned saline and stayed.
Nearly two decades on, the acid and minerality are still standing guard while the tertiary aromatics have fully arrived — no reason left to wait, every reason to enjoy. And somewhere out there are 3,329 siblings of this bottle, each having its own evening. Wondering how theirs went is one of the useless pleasures of drinking a numbered wine.