What Price Burgundy? : Can You Swallow This?

The first American tasting of the 1990 red wines of the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti was a rousing success here last week, and none of the 50 merchants and wine writers sipping wine from the most fabled properties in Burgundy blanched at the fact that the cheapest of these wines is $109.40 a bottle.

DRC, as it is called by connoisseurs, is the ne plus ultra of wine, regularly the most expensive Burgundy on the shelf.

Aubert de Villaine, proprietor of the domaine, stopped short of saying that these wines were greater than those of 1985, 1988 or 1989, but he conceded they were richer and denser, and thus needed at least 15 years of bottle age before they would reach an early peak of drinkability.

The wines are dense, I agree, and fairly compact, but were oddly closed in. I was struck by the lack of aroma and flavor. They are rich, thick wines to be sure, but I liked the 1988s and 1989s more.

Still the 1990 wines are impressive. My favorite, Richebourg ($221), shows raspberry and fresh plum fruit with a note of toast from new oak aging. There is also an exotic sandalwood and spice richness and a delicate sweetness that makes the wine clearly one of the better examples of the vintage.

Romanee-Conti ($812.50) has a black-cherry and tar/spinach complexity to the nose, a most concentrated wine that needs a decade to smooth out. La Tache ($327) is dense and thick, loaded with tannins. It lacks some of the charm I usually find in La Tache from good vintages but is powerful and should age nicely.

The other wines were also packed, but left me wanting a bit more, especially for the price. Echezeaux ($109.40) offers cherry-like fruit but has a hard edge in the finish; Grands-Echezeaux ($158) has a simpler aroma and an appealing sour cherry finish; Romanee-St.-Vivant ($161.85) is a smaller wine with a subtle earth-cherry nose, lacking much depth.

The suggested retail prices are artificially high to deter “gray market” selling by unlicensed distributors. They will probably sell for somewhat less. One San Fernando Valley wine merchant said, “No one will pay $327 for La Tache. I’ll bet you’ll be able to find it at $250.”

Moreover, he said, the famed “assorted case” of these wines (one bottle each of Romanee-Conti and Grands-Echezeaux, two each of Richebourg and Echezeaux, three each of La Tache and Romanee-St.-Vivant), which is supposed to sell for $3,000, “will be someplace for $2,050.”

Despite the excellence of these wines, some merchants were upset over the pricing. Said David Breitstein of the Duke of Bourbon in Canoga Park: “I can’t imagine anyone paying $100 for a bottle of Burgundy when you can get Au Bon Climat Pinot Noir ‘Reserve’ for $25.”