I believe everyone has something we want to achieve before we die. For myself, this may sound a bit strange but this truly is what I want to be able to achieve – to drink every Burgundy’s Grand Cru vineyard at least once, preferably a few times. Probably what cost the most would be the Grand Cru vineyards of Vosne-Romanee.
Among the six Grand Cru vineyards in Vosne-Romanee, I have already tried Richebourg and Romanee-St-Vivant. The other four are all monopole vineyards, namely Romanee-Conti, La Tache, La Romanee and La Grande Rue. What I tried this time is the cheapest Grand Cru among the four – La Grande Rue. This is a bottle of 2009 La Grande Rue Domaine Francois Lamarche.
Drinking this wine now is really too early and I feel like killing a new-born baby. Although knowing that this is a wine that I should wait, I still decide to open a bottle to see how it tastes since I have bought a case and I can drink one every one or two years.
Opened for four hours and just leave it in bottle before drinking, this wine has superb purity and elegance in its nose of black fruits, red fruits, crushed stones and pungent spices. Purity with richness and complexity without weight is what I’m looking for Burgundy’s wine and only happened to the most outstanding wines. This wine certainly fits into this category.
In palate, the wine shows similar richness and concentration. However, since the wine is still really young, fruit is still the dominant flavour with other flavours induced by barrel. Still the wine shows extremely good ageing potential that one must carefully analysed to discover.