Drink: Queen of Burgundy

I sniffed and sipped and concentrated. It was a wine to savour, drop by drop. A Grands Echézeaux ’98 from the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, this was not a mere bottle. It was an epiphany.

‘Great hatred, little room’: so Yeats summarised Irish history. We could paraphrase him for the DRC: great prices, little room. The clan chief, Romanée-Conti itself, is only four acres; one wonders what every grape is worth. For a chance to buy the wine, at more than £1,000 a bottle en primeur, you virtually have to be entered on a waiting list at birth.

I have only drunk it once. It was in the early Eighties at the Plough in Clanfield, Oxfordshire, where the wine list included a 1965 Romanée-Conti for £30. That was a hell of a price for a Burgundy from a bad year. Yet even in those days, it was a bargain for a Romanée-Conti. Did it live up to its reputation? No. I remember it as being drinkable, but nothing special.

A poor vintage is no basis for judgment. But I have heard serious Burgundians grumble about Romanée-Conti. One, who had assisted in the drinking of a couple of bottles from sound years, said that he did not know what the fuss was about. Good? Certainly. Great? Almost. Worth the price? Never. If you could exchange a single bottle of Romanée-Conti for a case of Chambertin-Clos de Bèze, do so.

Whatever the exchange rate for the Grands Echézeaux, I would be reluctant to take it. It was the most feminine wine I have ever drunk. Silken, coy, insinuating and witty, it released its charms with a gracious irony. Gentle reader, if that strikes you as absurd, you should have been alongside me striving to find words to do justice to the occasion.