Domaine de la Romanée-Conti LA TÂCHE 2021

Low in production and discreet in proportion, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s latest releases are classic, fine, and very beautiful, says Michael Schuster.

Paucity—of quantity, of course, not of quality. For although this is clearly a lighter vintage, it is, for all its cool restraint and more modest proportions, a lovely one, which will make for especially beautiful mature bottles.

Production figures

As a consequence, above all, of the great overnight frosts of April 6–8, the 2021 vintage had one of the lowest yields of the past 50 years. The global yield, as in 2008, was a half-harvest, with particular extremes in the Côte de Beaune, where the red Corton and white Corton-Charlemagne gave a mere 5hl/ha, Le Montrachet just 7hl/ha. A loss of 80 percent in Corton and 90 percent in Corton-Charlemagne and Le Montrachet. You can see the details, and the context, at the head of each wine note.

The Domaine has comparatively low yields anyway, but like all Burgundyproperties, its annual yields have been hugely variable over the past couple of decades, related largely to the weather extremes consequent upon climate change. From 2008 on, generous were 2017, 2014, and 2009; a healthy average were 2020, 2018, 2016 (with the exception of the severely frosted Échézeaux and Grands Échézeaux); variously paltry and meager were 2019, 2015, 2012, 2010; pitiable, in both cases, were 2021 and 2008, each producing a bare half-crop. (I didn’t taste and don’t have the figures for 2013.) At least 2022 and 2023 are looking generous.

The similarity in overall yield combined with their cooler growing seasons make 2021 and 2008 an instructive comparison in terms of style, quality, and aging prospects. And I happened to share a bottle of 2008 DRC with friends just a week before this Corney & Barrow tasting. It was illuminating, as I recount.

The growing season

The 2020/21 winter was mild, and after a cold February, budbreak began at the end of March, so the vines were exceptionally vulnerable to the severe frosts of April 6, 7, and 8, aggravated by the wetting effect of heavy snow on the 7th. The losses were dramatic and exacerbated subsequently, across the growing season, by disease: mildew, oidium, botrytis. After an overall cool April and May, a short burst of heat in mid-June at least allowed for a rapid, successful flowering. July and the first half of August were both cooler and wetter than usual; only late August and, increasingly, September saw the warmth that allowed the tiny harvest to ripen satisfactorily, its very skimpiness, as in 2008, being an advantage toward complete ripening at the end of this cooler year. Even then, the growing season’s unevenness and incidence of disease called for a severe trie of the harvested fruit—a further reason for its pitiful quantity.

Vintage style and quality

The year’s proportions are moderate, but the fruit was fully ripe—without the richer, super-ripe characteristics of most years since 2015. The wines remind me of the less fulsome vintages of the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. The grapes were thin-skinned, with a high proportion of liquid to solids, making for wines that are relatively pale in color. The flavor profile is of ripe red fruit, rather than black; the youthful aromas are “cool” to smell, alongside the herbal characters of 100 percent whole-bunch fermentation, and the wines are toothsomely carried and defined by fresh to lively acidities. What they lack in power and opulence, they make up for with finesse, delicacy, subtlety, and a deliciously lip-smacking vitality and core sweetness. The thin skins and very restrained extraction mean their tannin profile is discreet, superfine, almost imperceptible. But if their proportions are modest, and their relish is that of a quieter delivery, they lack for nothing in intensity of scent-as-savor. And a gorgeous fruit-fragrant persistence in the throat seems to be a feature of the year’s style. Many characteristics also of 2008—classic, fine, very beautiful DRC, that is.