DOMAINE DE LA ROMANÉE-CONTI, 2022 VINTAGE EN PRIMEUR
L'Ange de la Vigne. In the inner courtyard of the Domaine, on the Rue du Temps Perdu, sits a large bronze statue representing an angel in the vineyard, a gift from sculptor Boris Lejeune, husband of Madeleine de Villaine, a cousin of Aubert de Villaine.
“Quels mots trouver qui soient à la hauteur de tout ce que l’on voudrait raconter et partager quand on a eu la chance de vivre la naissance d’un millésime aussi exceptionnel que 2022! Certains pourraient se dire que nous aurions besoin d’un Virgile pour écrire une ode à 2022… En fait c’est la vigne elle-même qui, cette année, a écrit une ode à sa propre gloire… la vigne, cette plante extraordinaire, sans équivalent dans le monde végétal, qui a montré encore et plus que jamais, sa résilience et sa capacité à s’adapter aux extrêmes.”
What words would be appropriate to tell and share about all that we were lucky to experience with such an exceptional vintage as 2022! Some may say that we need a Virgil to write an ode to the vine. In reality, it is an ode to its own glory that the vine wrote this year. More than in any other year, this extraordinary plant that is unique in the vegetal world showed its resistance and capacity to adapt.
AUBERT DE VILLAINE JANUARY 2023
L-R: Bertrand de Villaine, Aubert de Villaine, Adam Brett-Smith, Perrine Fenal, Bryce Fraser, Guy Seddon and Joe Muller
INTRODUCTION GOOD RAIN
Powerful vintages frequently impose themselves on young wines and the definition of crus, even grands crus, becomes masked by the scale of the growing season.
Think of 1990, 2003, 2005, 2015, even 2018, where Nature’s mothership is reluctant to release her children into independence and the stamp, the individuality of each vineyard emerges only slowly.
What is magical about the 2022s however, the spiritual successors to the great 'solar' vintages ‘18, ‘19 and ‘20, is their early freshness, their elegance, and above all, their transparency that goes hand in hand with a calm sensuality and joyous power that are unique to this most beautiful of vintages.
Vines have a memory; and it was perhaps due to the terrible frosts of April 2021 and consequent tiny volumes that they were able to keep reserves of sustenance and stamina that were to become so crucial in 2022, along with the abundant rain in December in a winter that was not otherwise particularly cold or wet.
April, in its warmth and dryness, offered a rather alarming reminder of 2021 with an early budburst, but 2022 saw no frosts — rather, it continued sunny and warm to the extent that all the critical early season works of pruning, de-budding, tying-up and tying-down had to be performed simultaneously as the vegetation went into overdrive. The vineyard team, led by Nicolas Jacob and Didier Dubois, worked relentlessly at this time.
Flowering was early and fast, beginning on 20th May, helped by some beneficial rain on the 24th and ending on the 30th, with no coulure or millerandage, just the promise
of an abundant and early crop. A further benefit of the weather was the complete absence of mildew, oidium and botrytis, the fight against which had been so unceasing in 2021…
June was hot but with some usefully heavy rain (75mm) (how rarely does one say this!) between 22nd and 26th This represented another key factor in the success of the vintage in Vosne-Romanée as the rains proved vital in helping the vines get through the successive heatwaves that were to follow in July and August. And it was in August that the first signs of maturity blockage manifested themselves, happily headed off by three glorious days of stormy wet weather from 15th-18th, yielding some 20mm. Good rain indeed. Not only did the grapes ripen beautifully but they were bursting with juice, and maturity accelerated wonderfully well.
The fine weather also allowed the Domaine to risk waiting as long as possible before deciding on a harvest date, which was to be later than 2020 and in line with 2018 and 2019 (see table on page 17). This patience achieved a perfect balance between the maturity of sugar and tannins and freshness. The first cru to be brought in was the red Corton on 30th August, the last, Échézeaux on 11th/12th/13th September and Corton-Charlemagne on 8th/13th September. The crop was splendidly healthy without any trace of botrytis or any other disease and with just a few berries burnt by the sun removed by the harvesters.
Nature had been so generous that the crop took two weeks to be brought in — a fitting recompense for the trauma of 2021… and it was possible to reflect on two interesting features. Firstly, the few vines that were bearing large, compact bunches of grapes were bursting with fruit, but those of the Pinot Fin type offered numerous, small and less compact bunches with consequently small, thick-skinned berries, which I suspect gave the added richness, complexity and elegance to the wines. And secondly, that throughout the growing season and even after the harvest, the leaf canopy remained resolutely green — a telling illustration of how the Domaine’s vines have learnt to adapt to the exceptional climatic conditions.
Vinification, under Alexandre Bernier and his team, was faultless and each cuvée of this extraordinary harvest was expressed at its highest level with deep, deep colours, rich perfumes, supple tannins and, above all, a finesse and elegance that are astonishing. These are beautiful wines. The Montrachet and Corton-Charlemagne are equally lovely, silken, very pure and profound.
My tasting notes try and express the emotion of the vintage rather than the drier, factual detail. This may be found in “the 2022 vintage in numbers” on page 17. The allocation process, put together with your help and guidance, has an important addition that is worth reading, not least because we are always wishing to extend the ‘family’ of buyers — particularly younger ones — of this great Domaine.
Please do speak to your individual salesperson for further assistance and/or to our Sales Team on 020 7265 2430
ADAM BRETT-SMITH
FEBRUARY 2025
VOSNE-ROMANÉE
Chambolle-Musigny
Grands Crus du Domaine de la Romanée-Conti
N74
N74
Échézeaux
Les Grands Échézeaux
Flagey-Echézeaux
La Tâche
La Grande Rue
Vosne-Romanée
Nuits-St-Georges
La Romanée
Vougeot
Les Richebourgs Romanée Saint-Vivant
La RomanéeConti
Dijon
Beaune
Les Meix
CORTON & CORTON-CHARLEMAGNE
Le Charlemagne
Les Pougets
Les Languettes
Charlemagne
Bois de Corton
Le Corton
ALOXE-CORTON
Les Perrières
Les Fournières
Les Caillettes
Les Chaillots
Les Bruyères
Les Morais
Le Clos du Roi
Les Renardes
Les Bressandes
Le Rognet-Corton
D115d
D115d
Les Valozières
Les Marèchaudes
Les Lolieres
THE ALLOCATION PROCESS & NEW TERMS OF SALE
We always aim to make our allocation process transparent and fair. This is a painstaking exercise; each order is dealt with in detail. We thank you for your patience. Below are the Domaine’s and, by extension, Corney & Barrow’s allocation criteria.
• The Domaine’s focus is on the private customer and a small band of top restaurant customers, in both instances as consumers rather than speculators.
• From the 2022 vintage release, it will be a condition of receiving an allocation that these wines are stored with Corney & Barrow and are not removed from storage with us within five years of the wine being physically available. The only exception to this is delivery to your home address. Failure to adhere to this explicit requirement will jeopardise any future allocations.
• Should you wish to sell the wines in the future, may we please ask that you ensure that Corney & Barrow, as the Domaine’s agent, is given first refusal. This will ensure the integrity of secondary market distribution.
• Should customers wish to sell their allocation (or part of it) within three years of initial release, it can be fairly assumed that the wines were bought with speculation in mind rather than future personal consumption. This will impact the level of future allocations to any such customers, therefore allowing newer, younger customers access to the wines.
• Priority will be given to the Domaine’s and Corney & Barrow’s longstanding and best customers.
• We will do our very best to accommodate newer customers. To help with this, we do normally have a range of older vintages in stock to help begin a collection.
• May we please have your order by Thursday 20th February.
• Allocations will be completed by Thursday 27th February.
• Confirmation of order will be through receipt of invoice. The wines will be allocated into your reserve account upon payment and physically once the wines have arrived in the UK. All orders are conditional upon UK storage with Corney & Barrow only.
• For provenance reasons, we keep, for both the Domaine’s and our customers’ benefit, a record of all bottle numberings.
• May we please request that invoices be paid in full by Thursday 27th March.
• In all fairness, we reserve the right to re-allocate your order to other customers on the waiting list if payment is not received by this time.
AN IMPORTANT NOTICE
In recent years, the media have regularly reported raids by the police services of several European countries including France, which revealed the existence of international networks of counterfeits concerning, in particular, Romanée-Conti from recent vintages. Numerous people have been arrested, but there are still operations underway, and these cases will surely see further developments.
These events are certainly regrettable, but they show the will of national and European authorities to oppose firmly, and to put an end to actions which are very damaging to the image of great French wines. Let us be thankful for this. The victims of counterfeiters include professionals, but also collectors of great wines.
This is why we would like to take this opportunity to insist again on an essential point which interests all wine lovers and customers of the Domaine, whether professional or private: it is very important that, unless there is complete certainty about the origin of the bottles which you have been offered, you only ever buy our wines through official channels, that is to say via our distributors and the wine merchants they have selected. These channels provide not only the guarantee of authenticity but also integrity — that is to say, proper storage of the wines.
TASTING NOTES
VOSNE-ROMANÉE 1ER CRU CUVÉE DUVAULT-BLOCHET
A rose by any other name… and a great rarity. Offered in years in which the quality of young vines of the grand crus is so good, that a blend is made to be subsequently declassified to 1er Cru Duvault-Blochet in honour of Jacques-Marie Blochet who founded the Domaine in the 19th Century.
Full, limpid, ruby colour. There is an effortless quality to this wine that wears the vintage easily — a characteristic more or less matched in its senior relatives. The nose offers creamy red fruits, calm, dense and plump, very pure, subtly pungent. The palate is silken rich with generously deployed flavours, a delectable fine-grained structure and a startling, joyous freshness to the finish. A happy, beautiful wine.
Corney & Barrow Score 17.5 – 18
Recommended drinking from 2028 - 2031+
In line with the Domaine's wishes, this wine is reserved for our restaurant customers.
CORTON GRAND CRU
I recalled later that, intriguingly, this was the first of the grands crus to be harvested (30th August), a fact which may, or may not, support the sense of tension and freshness that particularly characterises this wine in 2022. Profound ruby colour, almost opaque. The nose is fruitcake-rich in perfume with the deepest red fruits, a sense of weight and power but minerality as well. The palate is initially lush, sweetly powerful and grainily dense matched by a tension, even a tightness to the structure that is all Corton. “This wine dances well but as if surprised at its own strength”, I scribbled. Not yet entirely at ease perhaps but greatness in the making.
Corney & Barrow Score 17.5 – 18
Recommended drinking from 2028 - 2037+
£1,305/Case of 3 bottles, in bond UK
ÉCHÉZEAUX GRAND CRU
As almost always, this is slightly deeper in colour than its elder brother, Grands Échézeaux — a virtually opaque ruby. Échézeaux has come of age these last five years and although I mourn a little the fiery “heart on sleeve”, D’Artagnan* quality of earlier vintages, what is offered from this vineyard in 2022 (the last of the Vosne wines to be picked) reminded me strongly of the remark I made that this wine might be the younger brother of Richebourg…
The nose has a profound black and red berried fruit perfume, earthy and rich. The palate is… insinuating, tarry/toffee-rich in flavour, creamily dense with a supple but powerful structure and a calm, authoritative finish with a flare of freshness that lifts the power quite beautifully.
Corney & Barrow Score 17.5 – 18+
Recommended drinking from 2028 - 2038
£1,605/Case of 3 bottles, in bond UK
*D’Artagnan – the fourth of The Three Musketeers
GRANDS ÉCHÉZEAUX GRAND CRU
Firm, limpid ruby. The nose is dark, earthily fruited, more clenched than Échézeaux with flashes of treacle richness but at the same time super refined and elegant. The palate echoes this but offers those characteristic grainy, powerful, chewy flavours of darkest red fruit, almost elemental but with a bright freshness on the finish that balances the power very well indeed.
Corney & Barrow Score 18 – 19
Recommended drinking from 2029 - 2039
£2,400/Case of 3 bottles, in bond UK
ROMANÉE-SAINT-VIVANT GRAND CRU
Profound ruby colour again. Creamily red-fruited perfume on the nose but dark with it, a sense of elusive, ethereal, silkily ripe, plump, almost lush fruit yet sherbertfresh at the same time. Really rather magical.
The palate is utterly at ease, modestly dense — unusual for Romanée-Saint-Vivant perhaps — with supple, layered flavours, serenely, subliminally powerful structure, the faintest claw of grip to balance and then a surprising burst of sweet, fresh, powerful flavours that almost, but not quite, swamp the haunting beauty of this wine — and a reminder of the real power of this vintage. “Slightly embarrassed by its own strength”, I wrote in the margin. A beautiful wine that rivals the memory of the 1999.
Corney & Barrow Score 18 – 19
Recommended drinking from 2030 - 2040
£3,900/Case of 3 bottles, in bond UK
RICHEBOURG GRAND CRU
Last year I referred to the increased elegance and minerality in this most seductive of crus, qualities that blended quite beautifully with the power of the vintage. Deepest ruby to rim. The nose shows profound red, red fruits, a super-refined, mineral-rich perfume and hints only of that degraded velvet density for which this cru is renowned.
The palate, however, as if supercharged by the vintage, which it wears so effortlessly, offers a fabulous profundity, with a calm (that word again), rounded, chewy, rich concentration, a layered density of flavours and a burst of leafy freshness to the finish. This is a powerful Richebourg but refined with it.
Corney & Barrow Score 18 – 18.5
Recommended drinking from 2030 - 2040
£3,840/Case of 3 bottles, in bond UK
LA TÂCHE GRAND CRU
Consistent, firm ruby colour. The nose is extraordinary, “almost violently vinous”, I scribbled, very whole bunch (that’ll please Guy Seddon) in its autumn leaf perfume and dark but bright and deepest red fruit. A sense of power only at this stage.
The palate is more measured with those characteristic creamy, supple, dark, chewy flavours, a powerfully dense structure that reminds you forcefully but serenely of the vintage and a delectable freshness on the finish, layered and sustained. My score may be a little conservative.
Corney & Barrow Score 18 – 18.5
Recommended drinking from 2029 - 2041+
£4,410/Case of 3 bottles, in bond UK
ROMANÉE-CONTI GRAND CRU
Slightly paler than La Tâche, a beautiful deep ruby. Frequently, Romanée-Conti is subdued in youth, latent. Not so in 2022 where it clearly finesses all the beautiful qualities of the other grands crus in an unimaginably effortless manner. The nose is hauntingly lovely with an intricate, atmospheric, layered perfume of delicately powerful, deepest red, old-vined fruits that float ethereally across the senses.
The palate embraces the power of the vintage with effortless ease and offers a density and a latent strength that seems rather magically to combine the terrestrial richness, dense, supple silken flavours and vast length with a subtlety and lightness of touch that is almost atmospheric. A beautiful wine.
Corney & Barrow Score 18.5 – 19.5
Recommended drinking from 2032 - 2047
£4,250/Case of 1 bottle, in bond UK
CORTON-CHARLEMAGNE GRAND CRU
The two finest plots on the majestic hill of Corton, Le Charlemagne and En Charlemagne, suffered terribly from the 2021 frosts. As if in recompense, they appear to have poured out their soul in 2022 with a quite glorious wine. Golden-green white in colour, the nose is utterly joyous with creamily ripe but plangently fresh, citrussy perfume, subliminally mineral. The palate is silken-rich, with sensuous layers of white and yellow fruits, powerful, authoritative flavours and a kick of dry, subtly austere freshness on the finish. A joy.
Corney & Barrow Score 18.5+
Recommended drinking from 2027 - 2036
£2,625/Case of 3 bottles, in bond UK
MONTRACHET GRAND CRU
Very similar colour to the Corton-Charlemagne with perhaps a touch more gold. Initially a taut, slightly reductive mineral nose, a sense of lithe, elusively sensuous white and golden fruit perfume and later, that tell-tale creamy, delicately buttery, subliminally rich, honeyed floral scent. Atmospheric rather than terrestrial.
Sweet on entry, the sensuality becomes silken, yellowfruited, profound in its concentration and with a lick of tension, dryness and acidity to lift the weight. Majestic certainly, hovers between the terrestrial and the ethereal.
Corney & Barrow Score 18 – 18.5
Recommended drinking from 2026 - 2042+
£2,460/Case of 1 bottle, in bond UK
THE 2022 VINTAGE IN NUMBERS
Tasting Guide
Our tasting notes provide full details but, at your request, we have also introduced a clear and simple marking system. We hope these guidelines assist you in your selection. For the benefit of simplicity, wines are scored out of 20. We will often use a range of scores (e.g. 16.5 to 17) to indicate the potential to achieve a higher mark. When a ‘+’ is shown it adds further to that potential. Wines from lesser vintages will, inevitably, show a lower overall score.
Wines are judged, in a very broad sense, against their peers. Why? Well, you cannot easily compare a Ford with an Aston Martin, other than they are both cars and have wheels. It is not that different with wine. A score is a summary only. The devil is in the detail, so please focus on the tasting notes and, as always, speak to our sales team.
RECOMMENDED DRINKING DATES
We
are regularly asked for more specific drinking dates for Burgundies, in particular from the great domaines.
REVISED DRINKING DATES
Vosne–Romanée 1er Cru Cuvée Duvault-Blochet
Here therefore, are specific recommendations of drinking dates for every recent vintage. Of course taste is a personal thing but having tasted and analysed these wines over the last few years, we believe that starting to open them on the dates indicated will ensure maximum enjoyment. For your interest and reference we have included our original recommendations made at the launch of the new vintages below. REVISED
LONDON
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