Domaine de la Romanée-Conti 2021: A vintage against the odds

Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC) unveiled its stable of 2021 wines in London on 7 February 2024.

Detailed tasting notes and scores will be published on Decanter Premium in March, when Decanter’s Burgundy correspondent Charles Curtis MW attends the domaine’s US tasting.

Ahead of this, Decanter spoke with DRC’s co-directors Bertrand de Villaine and Perrine Fernal as well as Adam Brett-Smith, managing director of the domaine’s UK agent Corney & Barrow about challenging vintage conditions in 2021 and what that means for collectors of these exclusive wines.

Charles Curtis MW’s in-barrel tasting notes for DRC 2021

Low yields

No discussion of 2021 can escape the subject of yields. Put simply, they were miserably small. A vicious frost between 6-8 April caused immense damage, followed by cool summer and a lot of disease pressure, resulting in the lowest yields in over 50 years.

‘If character is indeed tempered in the crucible of adversity, then the domaine’s 2021s are about as perfect an example of this as you will find,’ Brett-Smith pronounced.

Certain sites were hit harder than others. In Grands-Echézeaux somewhat respectable yields of 21.6 hectolitres per hectare were obtained. In Corton it was down to 5hl/ha and in Corton-Charlemagne just 4.8hl/ha.

By contrast, the 2020 yields in Corton-Charlemagne were 49.3hl/ha. For many wines produced by the domaine, production is down by 50% or more from 2020’s output.

Nonetheless, despite these challenges, the critical impression of the 2021s as a whole is of a freshness and delicacy (in the best examples) lacking from the more robust, ‘solar’ vintages of 2018-2020.

The winemaking

A tiny crop meant harvesting was lightning quick. Picking began in Grands-Echézeaux on 23 September and finished in Echézeaux on 2 October. Most plots were picked over just two to three days, and Romanée-Conti was harvested in just a day (25 September).

Despite the poor weather, the late burst of warmth had allowed sufficient ripeness for the use of 100% whole cluster fermentation in all of the wines.

The domaine has long used high proportions of whole clusters in its vinifications – ‘the stems are the bones, grapes are the flesh’, as de Villaine said, though 100% is rare.

Extraction was extremely gentle and although the wines were aged in 100% new oak until the malolactic fermentation was finished, barrel ageing was curtailed and the wines moved back into stainless steel to avoid masking the delicate fruit with too much wood.

De Villaine said he thought that, ‘technically’ the vintage ‘has the elements for long ageing’. Fernal noted that the 2008 vintage – a not dissimilar one in nature to 2021 – had surprised many with how well it was showing at a recent tasting.

Price and allocation

Small vintages invariably lead to price rises and such is the case with the 2021s. The average price increase across the range is 10%, with the higher increases applied to those sites – such as Corton, Corton-Charlemagne or Richebourg – which suffered the greatest drops in yield.

Where yields were higher, the rise has been kept to around 9%. The price of Romanée-Conti, for example, has risen from £3,870 a bottle for the 2020 to £4,250 for the 2021, an increase of 9.8%. Then again, the price of La Tâche has only risen 9.2% and its yields were down from 29hl/ha in 2020 to just 8.6hl/ha in 2021.

Not that prices will deter many. Demand for the domaine’s wines is such that they are all hugely over-subscribed.

The future looks more positive though, de Villaine noting that both 2022 and 2023 were ‘much better’ in terms of quantities.

And what do they taste like? While Charles Curtis MW will delve into far more expert detail, the 2021s bear the mark of a cooler vintage: the fruit character is more obviously red, the acids are high and fresh – teetering just the right side of tart – and the tannins so refined as to be barely there. The use of whole clusters is also evident in the omnipresent notes of black pepper, truffle and herbal bitters that add lovely complexity to the nose and palate.

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