Where La Tâche Lies
La Tâche occupies the southern flank of the slope of the grands crus of Vosne-Romanée. To the north, a narrow band separates it from the Romanée-Conti: that is La Grande Rue, promoted grand cru only in 1992. To the south, the climat extends towards the premier cru Aux Malconsorts, the last great climat of Vosne before the lands of Nuits-Saint-Georges. Like the whole vineyard of Vosne-Romanée, the parcel faces east, sometimes slightly east-south-east, on a slope whose vines are tiered between 250 and 310 metres in altitude.
The cru is a monopole: the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti is its sole farmer, as it is of the Romanée-Conti a few hundred metres to the north. It is also, in area, the estate's largest parcel — more than three times the Romanée-Conti — which explains why appreciably more bottles of it are met with: about 18,900 a year on average over 2017-2021, against some 6,100 for its neighbour.
The Terroir: Rendzinas Below, Premeaux Limestone at Depth
The BIVB describes for La Tâche and La Grande Rue shallow brown limestone soils in the upper part and deeper ones in the lower part — rendzinas. The base is the hard Premeaux limestone, bedrock of the slope of the grands crus, and the geological origin is Jurassic, of the order of 175 million years. The sequence read from the bottom to the top of the slope in this sector runs crinoidal limestone, Marnes à Ostrea acuminata, clayey limestone and then Premeaux limestone: the same succession as on the neighbouring La Grande Rue.
The singularity of La Tâche lies in its vertical extent. Where the Romanée-Conti fits into a homogeneous rectangle of less than two hectares, La Tâche runs across a good part of the slope and therefore crosses several facies: stonier and leaner above, deeper and more clayey below. Aubert de Villaine, long co-manager of the estate, describes this climat as the most diverse of its terroirs, where limestone substrates, red clays, gravels and marine fossils alternate according to the height on the slope. This internal mosaic is part of the explanation for the complexity of the wine.
Climate and Exposure
The general climate is that of the Côte de Nuits: temperate with a semi-continental tendency, pronounced winters, wet springs exposed to frost, hot summers punctuated by storms, often luminous late seasons. The easterly exposure gives pinot noir full morning sunshine and a gradual ripening, while the gradient drains water and cold air down towards the plain.
The altitude range of the climat plays a part of its own here. The top of the parcel, more exposed to the wind and leaner, ripens differently from the foot of the slope: it is a factor of balance in extreme vintages, hot as well as cool. The estate harvests late and in successive passes, and farms its vines biodynamically, a practice generalised in 2007 after several years of trials — a choice that weighs on yields as much as on style.
The Style of the Wines and Their Ageing
La Tâche gives a wine of dark ruby robe, turning carmine with age. The bouquet, very demonstrative in its youth, mixes rose and violet with small red and black fruits, sweet spices and liquorice, then evolves towards truffle, undergrowth, leather and fur. The palate combines clear power with a rare fineness of tannin, with a mineral and long finish. The comparison with its neighbour is a Burgundian commonplace: the Romanée-Conti asks to be sought out, La Tâche comes to meet the taster.
It is a wine for very long ageing, which ought not to be opened before ten years or so and which often reaches its summit after twenty years or more. The BIVB recommends serving it between 15 and 16°C. At table, these great pinots noirs call for furred and feathered game, wild fowl and fine roast cuts of veal.
1932-1936: How La Tâche Absorbed Les Gaudichots
Two vineyards have to be distinguished. La Tâche Joly de Bévy, named after a president of the parliament of Burgundy who owned it in the eighteenth century, covered only about 1.40 hectares: it is this one that Jules Lavalle classes "tête de cuvée" in 1855 and that Camille Rodier still measures at 1 ha 40 a 05 ca (about 1.40 hectares) in 1920. Beside it extended a far larger climat, Les Gaudichots — 5.95 ha for Lavalle, 5 ha 79 a 65 ca (about 5.80 hectares) for Rodier — classed only "première cuvée". In the nineteenth century the Duvault-Blochet family, ancestors of the de Villaine family, had acquired there, parcel after parcel, a dominant position, while the Liger-Belair family held La Tâche proper.
The Domaine de la Romanée-Conti took to selling its Gaudichots under the name of La Tâche. The Liger-Belair family contested the usage; the courts found against them in 1932, judging it lawful. The following year, in 1933, the Liger-Belair estate was broken up and the historic La Tâche was knocked down at auction at Vosne-Romanée: the estate acquired it and united the two vineyards in a single monopole. The decree of 11 September 1936 confirmed the whole as a grand cru, with an area of 6 ha 01 a 90 ca (about 6.02 hectares) originally, today 6.06 ha. The date of 1933 is therefore that of the union of the properties, not that of an administrative extension: it is the decree of 1936 that gave force of law to a usage already settled by the courts four years earlier.
Les Gaudichots, an Orphaned Premier Cru
The operation left traces on the ground. On the BIVB map of lieux-dits, the grand cru La Tâche is made up of two entities, "La Tâche" and "Les Gaudichots", while residual sections of Les Gaudichots, left outside the grand cru, continue to be sold as Vosne-Romanée premier cru by other estates. One and the same lieu-dit name is therefore read today at two different levels of appellation — a rare configuration, and the source of a lasting confusion for enthusiasts.
One last adjustment came in 1959: Henri Lamarche and the de Villaine family carried out, under the land consolidation law of 1941, an exchange of small parcels. Four parcels passed to Domaine Lamarche and have since been part of the climat La Grande Rue; seven parcels of Les Gaudichots joined the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and have since belonged to the climat La Tâche. The boundaries of the grands crus of Vosne, believed to be immemorial, were therefore redrawn in the twentieth century, by way of judgments, sales and exchanges of ares.