Romanée-Conti

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Romanée-Conti is a Grand Cru classified vineyard on the Côte d'Or in French Burgundy . It is located in the municipality of Vosne-Romanée , has an area of ​​1.81 hectares and its own appellation . Only red wine is produced from the Pinot Noir grape variety .

Location, climate and soil

The Romanée-Conti vineyard is located on a gently sloping eastern slope at an altitude of 260 to 280 meters above sea level . In the north it borders on the Grand Cru Lage Richebourg . To the west, the site is directly adjacent to the well-known La Romanée . In the south is the Grand Cru location La Grande Rue . Romanée-Conti is a monopoly of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti winery .

  • Overview plan of the individual locations in Vosne-Romanée

  • "Romanée-Conti" on the left and "Les Richebourgs" on the right

  • Domaine de la Romanée-Conti

  • Marking stone for the "Romanée-Conti" site

The climate is assigned to the Burgundian transitional climate , in which continental influences predominate over maritime ones. The mostly dry and hot summers allow the Pinot Noir to ripen, but great vintages are only created if there is no rain in autumn to impair the harvest. Due to the pure east location, the microclimate is relatively cool, but particularly sunny. Located just below the cut of the Combe de Concoeur , Romanée-Conti is protected from night winds and late frosts.

The higher part of Romanée-Conti rests on an oolite plinth from the Bathonium . The subsoil of the deeper part of the site is on Premeaux limestone. The brown, loamy-chalky rendzina layer has a high proportion of clay and is thinner in the upper layer than in the lower. Although the vineyard has a slope of only 3% , it is at risk of soil erosion .

The limestone rubble in the vineyard stores the warmth of the day and radiates it back to the vines at night. In addition, the limestones ensure good drainage .

For the northern city of Dijon (316 m), the following data applied between 1961 and 1990:

month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec year
Mean minimum temperatures ° C −1 0.1 2.2 5 8.7 12 14.1 13.7 10.9 7.2 2.5 −0.2 6.3
Average temperatures ° C 1.6 3.6 6.5 9.8 13.7 17.2 19.7 19.1 16.1 11.3 5.6 2.3 10.5
Mean maximum temperatures ° C 4.2 7th 10.8 14.7 18.7 22.4 25.3 24.5 21.3 15.5 8.6 4.8 14.8
Mean monthly rainfall (mm) 49.2 52.5 52.8 52.2 86.3 62.4 51 65.4 66.6 57.6 64.2 62 732.2
Source: Archives climatologiques mensuelles - for Dijon (1961-1990)

In 2007:

month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec year
Average temperatures ° C 5.3 6.4 6.9 14.7 15.6 18.5 18.7 18.2 14.4 10.7 5.3 1.6 11.3
Source: Average temperatures at the measuring point in Dijon in 2007

The following data were collected in 2008:

month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec year
Average temperatures ° C 3.8 4.7 6.3 9.1 15.8 17.8 19.9 18.6 13.8 10.3 6.4 2.1 10.7
Source: Average temperatures at the measuring point in Dijon in 2008

Wine

The Romanée-Conti is usually made exclusively from Pinot Noir . As more varieties are Pinot Liébault and Pinot Beurot admitted. In theory, up to 15% white grapes ( Chardonnay , Pinot gris and Pinot blanc ) can be used. The natural alcohol content must be at least 11.5  percent by volume. The chaptalization is - as everywhere in Burgundy - allowed. In the case of artificial enrichment with dry sugar, a maximum alcohol content is set, which is 14.5 °. The basic yield is 35 hectoliters per hectare per year, this may be exceeded by a maximum of 20%. From 2003 to 2007, an average of 42 hectoliters was produced, i.e. at a low 25.8 hl / ha. The Grand Cru delivers a good 5,460 bottles per year.

  • "Romanée-Conti" vine in September 2016

  • Location Romanée-Conti in Vosne-Romanée 2016

In 2005 the mean age of the vines was 52 years. In 1947 and 1948, suitable vines were removed from the La Tâche vineyard for planting the Romanée-Conti site, as the original vines from the time before the phylloxera were barely producing any more and were cleared after the 1945 harvest. The first vintage of new vines is 1952.

The wine critic Clive Coates writes about Romanée Conti:

The rarest, most expensive - and often best - wine in the world ... If you put your hands on a box - and the "if" is a big "if", because you have to pay 7,000 euros or more for a young vintage, and twice or three times as much for a wine in its prime - then you have the most aristocratic and intense example of Pinot Noir, the purest you could possibly imagine. It's not just nectar: ​​it's a yardstick by which all Burgundy wines are judged.

  • Bottle of "Romanée-Conti" vintage 1975

The Romanée-Conti location is arguably the best, but at least the most prestigious and expensive Grand Cru location in all of Burgundy . Since the soil in this location has never been traded, it has no price; it would be unimaginably high. Thus, the Romanée-Conti site is very likely to be the most valuable arable land on earth.

In March 2005, six Magnum bottles of the 1985 Romanée-Conti were auctioned in New York . They earned the equivalent of 134,315 euros. However, this record was beaten in 2006 by a box of Château Mouton-Rothschild from the legendary 1945 vintage. In a large store in Kobe , Japan , a bottle of Romanée-Conti 2000 is on sale for 787,500 yen, the equivalent of around 5,000 euros.

In October 2008, a 0.75-liter bottle of Romanée-Conti from the 2005 vintage was offered for 18,000 euros in the gourmet department of the Galerie Lafayette department store in Paris. In November 2012 it cost € 23,000.

A bottle of Romanée Conti from this wine-growing region from the 1945 vintage fetched the equivalent of almost € 483,000 at a Sotheby's New York wine auction in October 2018. Another bottle of this red wine achieved just under € 430,000. The reason for this price, according to Sotheby's, was the low production volume of only 600 bottles.

history

The history of the Grand Cru vineyards of Vosne-Romanée is inextricably linked with the abbeys of Cîteaux and Saint-Vivant in what is now Curtil-Vergy . On November 13, 1131, Hugo II, Duke of Burgundy bequeathed important lands to the monastery of Saint-Vivant in the area of ​​the present-day communes of Flagey-Echézeaux and Vosne-Romanée. The monks planted various vineyards over the years. In 1232 the monastery received the Cloux de Saint-Vivant vineyard as a gift from Alix de Vergy , the second wife of Otto III of Burgundy . According to a list from 1512, the Cloux de Saint-Vivant vineyard consisted of the districts Le Cloux des cinq Journaux , Le Cloux des quatre Journaux , Le Cloux des neuf Journaux and le Cloux du Moytant . While the parcel Le Cloux des cinq Journaux (1.71 hectares) was sold to Daniel Cousin in 1584 and later became the nucleus of the Romanée-Conti site, the remaining parcels remained in the possession of the monastery. In Revolutionary France , the Church's properties were declared national goods and auctioned.

The Romanée-Conti site received the status of a Grand Cru on September 11, 1936. The decree on the Contrôlée appellation also covers the neighboring Grands Cru sites Romanée-Saint-Vivant , Richebourg , La Tâche and La Romanée .

literature

  • Michael Broadbent , Gert Crum et al. a .: Le Domaine de la Romanée-Conti: cradle of legendary Burgundy wines. Zabert Sandmann, Munich 2005, ISBN 3898831035 .
  • Clive Coates: The wines of Burgundy . 1st edition. University of California Press, Berkeley 2008, ISBN 978-0-520-25050-5 .
  • Pierre Galet : Cépages et Vignobles de France. Lavoisier Publishing House, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-7430-0585-8 .
  • Remington Norman: Cote d'Or. The big wineries in the heart of Burgundy. Hallwag Verlag, Bern 1996, ISBN 3444104707 .

Web links

Commons : La Romanée-Conti  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jancis Robinson: The Oxford Wine Lexicon. Hallwag Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3774209146 , p. 812.
  2. ^ Remington Norman: Côte d'Or. The big wineries in the heart of Burgundy. Hallwag Verlag, Bern 1996, ISBN 3444104707 , p. 90.
  3. ^ A b c Decree on the Romanée-Saint-Vivant, Richebourg, Romanée-Conti, La Romanée and La Tâche appellations last accessed on 23 October 2009.
  4. ↑ Michael Broadbent , Gert Crum et al. a .: Le Domaine de la Romanée-Conti: cradle of legendary Burgundy wines. Zabert Sandmann, Munich 2005, ISBN 3898831035 , pp. 131-134.
  5. ^ Clive Coates: Côte d'Or '.' University of California Press, Berkeley 1997, ISBN 0-520-21251-7 , p. 596.
  6. ↑ BILD newspaper from October 16, 2016