A Pocket Handkerchief of Earth in the Middle of the Slope
The Romanée-Conti occupies the heart of the Vosne-Romanée slope, between the Richebourg to the north, La Romanée which looks down on it to the west, La Grande Rue to the south and the Romanée-Saint-Vivant below. A few steps are enough to reach it from the road; the parcel fits into a rectangle of less than two hectares, marked out by a low wall and a stone cross that has become the most photographed motif of the Burgundian vineyard.
The climat faces east, slightly inclined to the south, between 260 and 270 metres in altitude, on a gradient of about 7% — a moderate slope, neither the lean upper hillside nor the heavy foot of the slope. This middle position, at exactly the right point on the slope, is the first rational explanation of a reputation that is not rational at all.
The Terroir: Marnes à Ostrea acuminata and Clayey Limestone
The climat rests on two formations only, which is few and contributes to its homogeneity: the Marnes à Ostrea acuminata in its lower part, the clayey limestone in its upper part — the same sequence found on the other grands crus of Vosne, with the exception of the Romanée-Saint-Vivant. These Upper Bajocian marls, rich in small fossil oysters, retain water and feed the vine; the clayey limestone above them drains and constrains.
The soils themselves are described as brown limestone soils, strongly clayey, over some sixty centimetres of depth — deep enough to withstand drought, stony enough never to become waterlogged. Nothing exceptional in absolute terms: what is exceptional is the combination of this pedology, of the exposure and of the precise position on the slope, over an area small enough to be perfectly uniform.
Climate and Exposure
The general climate is that of the Côte de Nuits: temperate with a slight continental tendency, with pronounced winters, wet and frost-prone springs, hot summers broken by storms. The easterly exposure, very slightly turned to the south, gives the climat full morning sunshine and a regular ripening of the pinot noir.
On a parcel of this size, every meteorological accident reads directly in the volumes. Production varies strongly from one year to the next without any question of catastrophe: 5,548 bottles in 2002, against 3,575 in 2003. Vineyard management accentuates this variability: the estate moved officially to organic farming in 1985 and generalised biodynamics in 2007, after trials conducted since 2002, with the crop losses that this implies — losses accepted.
The Style of the Wines and Their Ageing
The robe is dark ruby, turning carmine with age. The nose, ample and diverse, mixes small red and black fruits, violet, spice and undergrowth. The palate is described as powerful and delicate at once, clean, complete, of great length. The wine is served between 15 and 17°C and keeps between twenty and forty years; it classically accompanies furred and feathered game, wild fowl and roast veal.
An obvious point must be added, which Jean-François Bazin stated without circumlocution: "Two thirds of the growers of Vosne have doubtless never drunk in their lives the smallest drop of Romanée-Conti." With about 5,500 bottles a year for the entire world, this wine is first of all a statistical rarity. The estate does not, moreover, sell it on its own: historically marketed in mixed cases of twelve bottles, it has been sold since 2003 in cases of thirteen, that is one bottle of romanée-conti for twelve other grands crus of the house.
From the Monks' Clos to the Prince de Conti
The site long belonged to the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Vincent de Vergy: a document of 1512 mentions a vineyard called "Aux Échanges", which is thought then to have brought together the present climats of the Romanée-Conti and of La Romanée. At the end of the sixteenth century the Cloux des Cinq Journaux — eight ouvrées, that is thirty-four ares, the nucleus of the future Romanée-Conti — was ceded under a long lease to Claude Cousin, sergeant-general of Dijon. It passed in 1621 to Jacques Venot, future mayor of Dijon, then in 1631 to the de Croonenbourg family, which would hold it for four generations. The name "En la Romanée" appears in the accounts as early as 1651.
On 18 July 1760, a descendant of the Croonenbourg family sold La Romanée to Louis-François de Bourbon, prince de Conti, lord of Nuits and of Argilly, a cultivated man, collector and fine gourmet. The transaction was resounding — 9,240 livres, when the Clos de Bèze had sold for 2,310 livres in 1750 — and the purchaser reserved the wine for his own table. The same year, a band of Richebourg running along the climat to the north was added to it; in 1763 the Conti family had the Goillotte, a former hunting lodge of the dukes of Burgundy, rebuilt in order to install presses, vats and cellars there. The compound name "Romanée-Conti" would paradoxically establish itself after the Revolution: it appears for the first time on the statement of receipts and expenditure for the years 1789 to 1793 intended for the directory of the district of Dijon.
Phylloxera, 1945, and the Replanting
Sold as national property in December 1794 to Nicolas Defer, passing in 1819 to the Ouvrard family — the same as those of the Clos de Vougeot — the Romanée-Conti was acquired on 25 November 1869 by Jacques-Marie Duvault-Blochet, a merchant of Santenay then aged eighty and ancestor of the de Villaine family. It then passed by succession and exchange within his line of descent; in 1942, Jacques Chambon ceded his half to Henri Leroy, a merchant at Auxey-Duresses. Since then the monopole has belonged to two lines, de Villaine and Leroy, whose representatives alternately serve as co-managers of the estate.
The most singular fact of this history lies elsewhere. While the whole of viticultural Europe had reconstituted itself on American rootstocks after phylloxera, the de Villaine family had opposed this for the Romanée-Conti and had maintained the ungrafted vine, planted "en foule", at the cost of expensive treatments with carbon disulphide: the 1942 label still proudly bears the mention "vigne originelle française non reconstituée". In poor condition, this vine was finally uprooted in 1945. The parcel lay fallow for two years before being replanted in 1947-1948 with cuttings taken in La Tâche. Direct consequence: no wine of Romanée-Conti was produced from 1946 to 1951.