As good as it gets?
Johnny Depp once starred in a film called What's Eating Gilbert Grape? When Mr Depp comes to wine, though, it's a matter of What's Gilbert Grape Drinking? as the star was (in)famously the subject of tabloid rage when he paid £11,000 for a bottle of wine. Even if you can accept that fine wine costs money, this is a hell of a lot to lay out. But this was a 1978 La Romanée-Conti from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC) and when you talk about DRC's wines, you're in a different world.
To try to understand Romanée-Conti (and, by extension, DRC itself) you have to get to grips with Burgundy. Newcomers to the region are bewildered by the subdivision of the land into a patchwork quilt of plots and rows, with each vigneron having one row of vines here, a tiny block there. It makes economies of scale an impossibility, which partly explains Burgundy's high price. It also explains why there are hundreds of different people apparently making the same wine.
DRC puts the current trend of claiming that first vintages from wineries in Pomerol, the Napa and Barossa are the greatest wines ever made in perspective. When the monks of the Priory St Vivant sold their 1.8-hectare Cros de Clos in 1259 they had already been making wine there for 200 years - and the site was noted as one of the best in Burgundy. Renamed Romanée, the site was sold to the Prince de Conti in 1760. After the revolution it passed from hand to hand, and in 1869 it was bought by Duvault Blochet.
Burgundy is hardly lacking in top producers, so why DRC? Put simply: site. All the Domaine's reds are situated around Vosne-Romanée on east and south-east facing slopes made up of reddish-pink clay, marble and limestone soil. And there's the obsessive belief in quality, tradition and hands-on winemaking. "The Domaine's philosophy is that the wine should be a reflection of the terroir and viticultural practices, rather than winemaking," says director Aubert de Villaine.
Most great wines are made simply. It's the advantages of great site and attention to detail that set them apart. DRC is run on organic principles - horses have been reintroduced to avoid soil compaction in La Romanée-Conti - while parts of La TÁ¢che and Grands Echézeaux are being cultivated biodynamically.
The aim is to capture the maximum concentration of vineyard character in the grapes. That means the vines are much older than other Grands Crus - 44 years old on average (La Romanée-Conti's vines are 52 years old on average) while yields are taken to the ridiculously meagre levels of 2,500 litres per hectare. That means it takes fruit from three vines to produce one bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. Everything is set up to produce a powerful, richly concentrated, exotically-scented wine that will take 15 years minimum to star opening and which improves for decades after.
All that: small-scale production, tiny yields and high demand mean this is a pricey wine. Corney & Barrow is offering the 1998 La Romanée-Conti at £540 a bottle.
At least you can argue that there is rarity value built in. There are only 450 cases made every year. Other fine wines are making a hundred times as much.
If DRC didn't insist on brutally strict quality control in the vineyard it could make a little more. But it doesn't want to - and doesn't need to, either.
That's why it's expensive, but is it worth it? Well, if people are happy to pay for it, then it is. A better question is: does rare automatically mean good? Did Johnny Depp buy that bottle because he appreciated the greatness of the wine or is DRC's reputation such that people buy it for its image? The Domaine is not so much about image as it is about reality, says Corney & Barrow's Adam Brett-Smith, but I understand what he means. The reality is that a belief in tradition, terroir and quality has produced a range of wines which defines red Burgundy. Let's hope Johnny realised that.
