DOMAINE DE LA ROMANEE-CONTI Grands Echezeaux Grand Cru 2018 Bottle

Description

The 2018 Grands Échézeaux Grand Cru showcases an impressive array of accolades, including 96 points from Decanter and 95-98 points from Jasper Morris. It presents a glowing purple hue and a classic Domaine de la Romanée-Conti nose, offering a perfect blend of freshness and depth. The wine displays riper fruit profiles than its Échézeaux counterpart, with a rich bouquet of cherries, sweet berries, and plums intermingled with exotic spices. Critics highlight its muscular structure, powdery tannins, and captivating finish, with the palate revealing layered, seductive flavors. Although initially exuberant, this wine promises to evolve beautifully over time, with potential for long-term aging. Recommended drinking spans from 2024 to 2058, ensuring a legacy of delight for discerning collectors.

*****

JASPER MORRIS - Inside Burgundy - 5 STARS (95-98 points)
"Glowing purple with a classic Domaine de la Romanée-Conti nose, picked the same day as the Echezeaux but riper. Still has the same engaging super fine acidity and a magical length of fruit. Perfectly poised perfume with a hugely lively finish. I see why Aubert de Villaine believes that 2018 is a truly great vintage. Tasted Nov 2019."

DECANTER 96 points
Blind tasted by Tim Atkin MW(at 2018 En primeur tastings, Burgundy, 20 Oct 2019)
Showing more tannin and backbone than DRC's Echézeaux bottling, which tends to be the case, this comes from vines aged between 70 and 90 years old and benefitted from it cooler, more moisture-retentive soils in 2018. Intensely spicy, with clove and tobacco pouch aromas, impressive texture and weight, refreshing supporting acidity and lots of underlying concentration.
Drinking Window 2024 - 2038

THE WINE ADVOCATE 94 points
Drink Date: 2028 - 2058
The 2018 Grands Échézeaux Grand Cru is a rich, muscular wine, unfurling in the glass with aromas of cherries, sweet berries, red fruit compote and plums mingled with subtle hints of exotic spices and peonies. Full-bodied, fleshy and broad-shouldered, with an ample core of fruit, powdery tannins, ripe acids and a long, heady finish. Out of the gates, the 2018 is something of a fruit bomb, but with time it should metabolize that puppy fat to become something special. - William Kelley

CORNEY & BARROW 18+ points
As always this is fractionally paler in colour than Échézeaux. The nose is carapaced, initially impenetrable but then slowly yields a perfume of super refined, old vine fruit, clenched, Asiatic, almost shockingly pure and elegant. The palate is sweet on entry, but with a dry concentration, layer after layer of powerfully rich almost seductive flavours and a massive finish. This is definitely Grands.
Recommended drinking from 2026 - 2038+

VINOUS 92-94 points
The 2018 Grands Echézeaux Grand Cru may well be the most perplexing offering from the domaine this year. Backward and reticent on the nose, this is very well-defined, but my word, you have to eke out the light sea cave and limestone scents with rigorous swirling of the glass. The palate is medium-bodied and very fresh. This is an atypically linear Grands Echézeaux that sports a bony finish marked by the whole-bunch addition. I am fascinated to revisit this once in bottle. At the moment it is a book that does not want to be read. - Neal Martin