2020 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, Romanee-Conti Grand Cru

Young Romanée-Conti is sometimes enigmatic, with its greatness obscured. If this bottle was any indication, however, the potential of the 2020 vintage is already on display. This wine is immensely aromatic, with remarkable depth on display in the ripe blackberry fruit with notes of earth, spice, and a complex savoury, almost gamey note that echoes on the impressively lingering finish. The texture is suitably firm and substantial, but there is astonishing elegance and freshness for such a torrid vintage, especially since this site was picked before the rains on 27 August. This is everything you want Romanée-Conti to be. 6,003 bottles were produced.

The 2020 Romanée-Conti Grand Cru is a wine of real grace and purity. Unfurling in the glass with aromas of raspberries and blackberries mingled with sweet spices, violets, peonies and a subtle hint of wintergreen, it's full-bodied, ample and satiny, with terrific concentration and a suave, seamless, layered profile, gliding over the palate. It's as intensely flavorful as the more muscular, broader-shouldered La Tâche, but it's more elegant and sensual. It's also the wine in the cellar that's the least marked by the style of the vintage.

The 2020 Romanée-Conti Grand Cru soars out of the glass with tons of vertical intensity. Deep, structured and explosive, the RC is another magnificent wine in this tasting. When it might actually be ready to drink is another question entirely. Hints of black cherry, plum, mocha, gravel, incense and tobacco open with great reluctance. The 2020 is in no mood to show its cards today, but it is very clearly a grand wine in the making.

The 2020 Romanée-Conti Grand Cru was picked on 26 and 28 August at 28.7hL/ha. As usual, I leave it for 5-10 minutes to open in the glass, predisposed not to show everything upon first pour. It reveals lovely dark berry fruit, sous-bois, clove and haunting sea spray notes (picture yourself walking along the pebble beach at Whistable and the tang of shucked oyster shell in the salty air). The palate is medium-bodied with very fine and pliant tannins. Harmonious to a tee with a perfect silver bead of acidity, long and languorous, this fans out with ineffable ease on the finish. Stunning. 500 cases produced. Tasted at Corney & Barrow’s annual in bottle tasting in London.

Dark garnet. Ah, now that’s the DRC nose that I recognise! Such majestic richness. An inhalation as much as a drink! Sweet, gentle start with so much complex fruit that it almost disguises the structure which is certainly there, lurking underneath. This is a brooding giant that delivers current pleasure already but promises much. In fact it is spookily approachable – just the job for the billionaires who can afford it! Lifted towards the end after all those complex red-fruit flavours. Very absorbing. I wonder whether it will close down? My drink dates assume not. (JR)