Domaine Romanée Conti (DRC) - La Romanée Conti 1937 with Single OWC

Broadbent review: Romanee-Conti 1937 - A great wine. I first tasted it in 1957 at dinner with a client, a Cheshire fruit grower with a fabulous cellar. I quote from volume 3 of my tasting notes: "Big and black, austere and concentrated; sweetish, intensely flavoured. On the same level as the 1945 Mouton. Good for at least another ten years" (I had only been in the wine business for five years). Next at Christie's in 1972, then seven years later at a dinner in the Christie's boardroom: "Still quite deep ... overripe and gamey on the nose, but opulently rich and attractive ... the flavour seemed to expand and get richer in the glass." Later, a magnum that literally outperformed more than 60 red 1937s from Bordeaux at a Rodenstock wine weekend: quite deep, warm, autumnal colour; ripe, rich, classic, Pinot-typical "beetroot" bouquet, fragrant, persistent; very "sweet", full-bodied and rich in substance. Like the dance of the seven veils, a little more of this wine revealed itself with every cautious breath and sip.

At the Domaine de la Romanée Conti, the motto is that the producer should only be an intermediary between the soil and the wine. Intervention is to be avoided at all costs and only recommended in special cases. The cellar master Aubert de Villaine expresses this as follows: "Nothing is more difficult than to act with simplicity; the ideal would be to do nothing at all - but that is not possible." The barrels used for the final maturation of Domaine Romanée Conti wines have been replaced every year since 1975, which naturally leads to considerable costs, but benefits the quality. In 1979, the high demand for French oak led Domaine Romanée Conti to procure the wood itself and make it available to the cooperage. The wood comes from the Troncais forests and is among the best on the market. In the past, bottling was always done in the ultra-traditional way, but this led to significant variations between bottles. In 1982, in agreement with the owners of Domaine Romanée Conti, the cellar master decided to bottle the wines in batches of 5 barrels in stainless steel tanks and to bottle them by gravity. The Domaine de La Romanée Conti is surrounded by many myths and legends. It produces one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive wine in the world. In recent years in particular, demand for Domaine Romanée Conti wines has risen sharply in Asia. To acquire a bottle of the legendary monopole wine Romanée Conti, you have to subscribe to a 12-bottle case and hope to get an allocation. There is no chance of getting hold of several bottles of Romanée Conti wine by subscription.