2024 Lunar New Year Wine: Domaine Romanee Conti 2015 Echezeaux Grand Cru Trophy Burgundy Wine Review

The story of Domaine De La Romanee Conti start in 1232 when the Abbey of Saint Vivant acquired 1.8 hectares of vineyard (which the current day monopole of Romanee Conti). In 1631 it was purchased by the de Croonembourg family, who renamed it Romanée. During their ownership, they also acquired what the current day monopole of La Tâche. In 1760, the de Croonembourg decided to sell the winery to Louis François, Prince of Conti. From then on, the winery became known as Romanée-Conti.

During the French Revolution, the prince’s land was seized and auctioned off. The next notable owner of DRC is Jacques-Marie Duvault-Blochet, who purchased it in 1869. Duvault Blochet acquired what is the current holdings of DRC in Échezeaux, Grands Échezeaux and Richebourg. DRC’s entry level wine is named after Duvualt-Blochet.

2015 was a spectacular vintage for Burgundy. In 2015, every wine in DRC’s line up in 2015, apart from the Corton, underwent 100% whole bunch fermentation. This is atypical for DRC, who has only done this in recent times in 2005 and 2009 and can only done when there is great ripeness in the grapes.

Echezeaux is a Grand Cru site in Burgundy. DRC owns about 4.67 of the 37 hectares that make up the entire region. Echezeaux has 11 different climates or plots and about 90% of DRC’s holdings are in the plot called Les Poulaillaires, which is arguably the best site in Echezeaux other than perhaps Les Cruots or Vignes Blanches (where Ligier Belair and Jayer have vines)

For more information about the winery, please visit their website at http://m.romanee-conti.fr/

Hello wine lovers trophy wine Hunter welcome back to my YouTube channel this is my Lunar New Year uh celebration wine so for all those who celebrate lunar year this is the year of the dragon and so happy Lunar New Year to all of those who celebrate it out there and uh I

Decided to open a bottle of 2015 DRC EST show so I will not go through the history of the Dr C label I did that in a previous video uh which I refer to you at the last part of I’ll put it at the last part of this video a

Link there um where I think I reviewed the 1997 uh Roman Sant from DRC so this video will be about this wine and just a little bit about just drinking dropy wines and encouraging collectors to drink their trophy wines this is part of my New Year’s resolution I would like to

This year and probably for years to come at least drink one DRC each year uh and that would be a nice goal for anyone I think anyone who’s blessed to even drink one bottle in their lifetime and I do understand the blessing that I have by being able to drink these wines well

Let’s talk about EST show first and I’ve had other estos which I’ve actually reviewed on this channel namely the I think it was the Bish show EST show and so you can refer to that video which I’ll also put at the back of this video so ESO is fairly large region it’s

Actually about 37 hectar something like that the um DRC actually owns about 4.67 hectar and so that’s almost 10% of the place and in fact estrel is divided into 11 climates or plots and and 90% of drc’s Holdings is concentrated in a area or climate or plot called Le payers and

So that is considered probably uh one of the top kind of uh plots of land in eses show the only one that might be a little bit better in terms of complexity is a place called LA cruo or vin Blan which where uh Li belir and Jer have um plots

Of land there so 2015 was a good vintage for burgundy and it was kind of this uh no real problem type vintage and so that’s really good in burgundy that’s very unusual so it got a lot of uh late ripening and the The Grapes were able to

Fully ripen and so they going to get a lot of intensity of flavor so every wine in the DRC lineup in 2015 other than Corton on under what 100% whole bunch fermentation and that is supposedly not done very often with DRC it has only been done in 2005 and

2009 and you can only do that if you have great uh ripeness in the grapes I’m going to talk a little bit before we go into this wine in detail about drinking trophy wines some people will comment on this saying Trophy this is too young to drink this

Wine um you know you’re kind of uh being silly to actually open a wi this like this and here’s my point so first of all um I’ve had this wine I think now three times the first time I had it uh was in Bordeaux uh I think in

2019 with one of um the I think the wine maker of chatau pavi in a restaurant and I thought it was amazing at that time and I never forgot that experience the French generally drink things younger um than we do in North America but I was so

Surprised when he opened that um and it was great so I had that recollection I’ve had another bottle since then and this is my third bottle so I have first of all some experience with this wine and although of course it could lasts 15 20 years longer it actually drinks very

Well um young and um even if you look at all the um commentary even from the um managing director of DRC o vong he says that this wine is actually it’s not a crime to drink this young and this goes back to my point about drinking wines

That you owe um because you would never know how this Dr this wine drinks if you don’t drink wines younger so some people will call it a waste I would call it education because I am now familiar with this wine again I’ve had it three times

Um and so I’ve kind of understand the the progression of this wine uh most people even critics will probably just taste it at the beginning and then extrapolate but that there’s no substitution for actual tasting so I think that’s the first important point the second point is even when I was

Doing this video uh but for the fact that I actually had told people I was going to drink this through my videos and I actually had uh told people that I was going to share this wine there’s some hesitation anytime that you open a wine like

DRC and any trophy wine that you might have in your seller because you’re always thinking well it’s too young well it’s not the right time it’s there’s not a big enough occasion and you can make a lot of excuses for yourself for not opening a wine but as a wine collector

And a wine enthusiast the point of collecting wines is to drink them and I find that far too often collectors love the idea of owning a DRC they don’t love the idea of actually opening it because that’s their investment that’s their money and wow

What a in a way waste to be able to drink this wine and again I’m talking to people that actually have the means or have some DRC whether they bought it uh when they were uh you know younger from my perspective of course you do not you

Should not be drinking wines that are over your abilities in terms of financial abilities that’s not what I’m saying but I’m saying if you have the means and you’re already owning the wines um you do have to drink them uh unless you are committed to just being

An inv investor and you don’t actually don’t like wines at all you just buy wines for investment I find way too many people actually call themselves wine enthusiasts uh but they have a real reluctance to open their trophy wines and that reluctance uh increases with the price

Of the wine um and that’s understandable I’m not blaming anyone for that but I’m just saying that as a collector think about that open your wines and almost force yourself like I did uh have a resolution I’ve got to open uh one of my trophy wines every year and I’m not

Talking about people that buy you know one nice bottle of chaa feed and have stored it for you know want to save it for 20 years I’m talking about collectors that have way way way more wine than I do way more trophy wines

Than I do I do uh it’s not going to kill you to open a bottle and so uh I encourage you to do that rather than just um bask in the glory of uh just holding the wine um and I understand the idea oh once I drink it I don’t have it

Anymore but that’s why you’re a wine enthusiast because you actually enjoy the wine and you enjoy the passion and you enjoy the actual tasting and learning of the wine not holding the bottle and I’m sorry if I come off as lecturing or preachy but I have seen far

Too many instances in my life where people have spent their lifetime collecting wine and whether because of health or because of death that they um have never drank the the top wines that they’ve collected so they’ve drank some nice wines but a lot of them have never

Even drank all those wines that they coveted so long and that’s all I’m saying um you should probably drink them once in your lifetime so that you can actually appreciate what you have coveted all these years uh and what ends up happening is is that in these instances they sell off

Their wine to other people that uh you know can enjoy the fruits of their labor um and also um you know people will again make a lot of excuses saying just keep it for my children or they’ll drink it that generally doesn’t happen um in my experience most of the children

Aren’t as passionate there are of course there are exceptions this notion that somehow this collection will be kept for my children and their children and they can enjoy this for 40 or 50 years my fruits of my passion that generally I’m not saying it doesn’t happen at all but it

Generally doesn’t happen most of the next generation will drink a little bit but most of them will sell it off quite frankly and it just becomes an investment and if you were going to do that type of investment why why would you take up all that space and you know

Collect all these bottles why would you just buy stocks or even buy um stocks in wines most of the times when I see this not every bottle could be sold and in fact a fraction generally of the collection is actually worth anything um of course with higher end wine

Collections there’s more of them but in general the collection of wines let’s say you have 10,000 bottles of wine in general maybe five five or 6,000 will actually be of any value so there’s actually 4,000 there are basically giveaways and so those wines would probably you put you could have drank

You could have given to friends you could have over the lifetime and of those 6,000 bottles that you could have sold you probably could have drank one a year and you know really tasted something exceptional I just want to qu hopefully um spark some changes in some people um

In their approach to wines because again wines are meant for drinking this is what the owner of DRC always says too if they’re meant for drinking and the percentage of DRC that is actually drank is very very low I think it’s in the teens like 10 or 15% and so um really

That tells you that um people are collecting it which is great I don’t think that’s anything a problem but I’m just saying you know if you have an abundance of trophy wines out there you should enjoy them while you can uh we don’t know what tomorrow brings uh we

Don’t know your health your financial abilities in the future and if that’s the case really as a wine person you should Savor that experience which I’m doing now so let’s look at the DRC this is the Cork and for 2015 a little bit of um C pitch in but that’s fine because

It’s uh it’s okay I think uh nice cork this is the bottle there sh so very plain not much to the back of it and then uh here we have the color of the wine and it is a much dark darker shade of red than most Peno noirs that you

See enough of my preaching let’s get to this wine so I have had this open now for a day uh I initially drank it with some friends and um out of the bottle very aromatic and by aromatic I would say flowers like violets and roses if

You leave it in your room the room fills up with this smell of um FL floral smells in it uh this is one of these weird wines I’ve had this now open today and sitting in room temperature in my glass for good part of 4 hours no

Problem at all still smells great um so I don’t know how they do that but it’s uh one of these few wines that can keep an aroma for hours and hours and hours so that’s kind of unique um so so when you smell this wine

This is a very unique wine um on the smell it’s very aromatic there’s some fruit um I say you know Bo and berries and uh black cherries and then there’s a little bit of um almost a mineral in this wine and then some sweetness uh some sweet

Fruit uh and a touch of Oak but it smells and when we get to The Taste nothing like anything else any other Pino Noir that you can think of and the first thought I had when I smelled this wine and drank it was it was very much

To me like rbor wines um so that intensity so the color of this is quite intense and The Taste profile is very intense and very rarely will I find a p Noir which what I would call tanic so this is tanic um so it does leave that

Dryness in your mouth but in a good way it’s soft tannins but very few Pino noirs in the world I would describe as as tanic maybe bu wines something like that right let’s taste it so very unique tasting again it is much heavier than most traditional Pino Noir B burgundy p noirs

And one of the things that I think people associate with Pino Noir from burgundy and one thing they don’t like is the high acidity and the like really tart cherry so this has Cherry this has acidity but it doesn’t have that tartness it is almost like a black

Cherry and more uh ripe Cherry uh tones to it it’s got a undertone of um kind of GRA Min and graveless and earthiness that is akin to some things on the right Bank of Bordeaux that type of taste and then it’s got a very long aftertaste that has a tanic component to

It which is again very unique the other thing that strikes me with this wine is there are very few wines that I can drink essentially like water so this is a 2015 wine and it just is so smooth I just can sip it and drink it um I had it

With some salmon and it was great but even as a sipping wine by itself I think it’s really really nice not that it’s light but it’s almost like a coarse in a in a in a meal by itself so a lot of people will always say well is it worth

The price so for me when you get to a certain level and that level was probably over maybe 100 150 we never talk in those that that way because really uh it’s very hard to justify any wine in my opinion over $150 if you just look at it uh scientifically or

Empirically because it’s a wine it’s great you know is it really worth that more most people’s mind they would say no but in my mind the calculation doesn’t go like that that when you um look at trophy wines and particular particularly at the top level the

Calculation of if it’s worth it is not evaluated on points and the um the price it is based on the experience so that’s something that’s unique and is this wine unique and I can tell you it is um it is a very unique wine in a good sense again

I I go through I mean I drink many many wines uh through a year you viewers see that you see how many wines I actually drink um that are trophy wine levels there are very few wines that I can say that are unique like this is a very

Unique wine um even among burgundy red wines this is quite distinctive in my opinion this is definitely different than every other extra show that I’ve had before um those ones were good but I didn’t get it uh I can see why this is more coveted than these other estra

Shows now I haven’t had the Jr one I haven’t had the LI Bair uh s show but I’ve had others and although they’re good they are not at this level and we’re not talking about points we’re talking about impact and um I can tell you this wine is very distinctive among

Pino Noir wines um The Taste profile is very distinctive how it makes you feel is very distinctive so um I’m very happy to dopen this wine let’s put it that way um could this go on yes this is a very it is a very young wine it could

Probably go another 15 20 30 years easily it will develop more but it’s drinking really well right now so my rating of this wine right now is 95 or 96 points so my point is this may get to in 20 years 98 points but uh why wait right it’s it’s a

Great wine and so for me as a wine enthusiast a person that’s passionate wine uh there’s probably no good reason to to open this other than every day is a good reason uh every day you’re alive every day that you have health every day that you’re blessed is a good reason and

So um there doesn’t my point is there doesn’t have to be a good reason um there doesn’t have to be the right event uh particularly with people that have a lot of wine and trophy wines um don’t use those wines as trophies don’t use those wines as mantel pieces they’re

Living breathing things things that should be enjoyed I’m not saying drink up your whole collection but I am saying you should enjoy once in a while what you have um coveted what you have perhaps earned what you have uh always wanted and then you have to look at your um

Rationalization did you want or when you purchase this wine did you you want the wine because you really wanted to try it and you’re passionate about this wine or you you’ve had it before and you loved it or did you buy this wine for the sake

Of saying that I have the wine those are two different things and I’m not judging people you know you can do whatever you like with your money but um for me as a wine enthusiast why I buy wine is to enjoy them uh and when I say enjoy them that

Doesn’t mean showing them off to my friends that means opening them uh enjoying them myself and if I can enjoying them with people around me so I hope you have enjoyed this review very long-winded half of it wasn’t about the wine but uh until next time happy drinking