INTRODUCTION

Imagine a situation when a collector of some of the rarest Picassos covering several periods of his artistry decides to hold a very private exhibition of these paintings. He invites other painters acclaimed as some of the greatest including Manet, Monet, Cezanne, Gaugin, and many others and, of course, invites Picasso himself. He assembles them in a room with him, and his few chosen friends, and asks them to discuss the paintings, one by one for several days, freely and critically. What would the atmosphere be like in that room? Exciting? Electric? Educational? Well, it would be difficult to describe it in a single word.

Such was the case last February with some 40 top vintages of Romanée Conti that came from the cellar of Wolfgang Grunewald and were tasted over a period of three sessions with some of the greatest wine makers and proprietors in the world, including Aubert de Villaine, the proprietor of the Domaine.

“One hundred years of Romanée Conti: from 1899 to 1999” was the title. The wines were purchased over a twenty-year period and kept impeccably well by Wolfgang, who now lives in Switzerland. I have known him since the days he was in Los Angeles many years earlier.

Financially and publicity-wise he might have perhaps done better by selling his collection. But he had always insisted that he bought these wines, as he had bought other wines, to enjoy drinking them with friends and wine connoisseurs like himself. So that’s exactly what he did, each day, with 14 people that he had personally invited.

Wolfgang happens to be my best friend. He calls me his “wine-guru” but in this case I was his “super side-kick”! In other words, I was number two, and as the adage goes, when you are number two, you try harder!

So the experiences I had gained over almost two decades of organizing tastings were put at his disposal. Besides the do’s and don’t’s I had learned, which I passed on to him, my major contributions, in retrospect, turned out to be the following two.

First was arranging the flights for him from a rather complex array of vintages so that each flight reflected a specific theme. For example, I lumped together 1899, 1915, 1919, 1929, and 1937 in the category “old classics”; the vintages 1969, 1983 as “promises unfulfilled”; 1971, 1978, 1990, 1999 in “modern classics” and so on.

My second contribution was to answer his question about whom to invite? “Why not those who make some of the greatest wines in the world ?”, I said. Romanée Conti will have a particular appeal to them, I felt, and Wolfgang agreed. It is one wine in the midst of all the other great wines in the world that has an aura which is without equal. And yet, because its production is so incredibly small, it is a wine with which the producers and wine-makers around the world would have the least experience, especially the old vintages. Besides, who better to appreciate greatness than people who knew very well what greatness is.

From a list of the people I had known personally, a majority of whom Wolfgang had also met, he made his selections and, after consulting with Aubert de Villaine, invitations were sent.

Everyone who was invited was very eager to come. Some people couldn’t make it because of their schedules, though a few managed to alter their original plans. But not everyone was able to come for all three days. Wolfgang also invited a few collectors and close friends from Switzerland. No professional wine writers were invited.

Where to hold the tasting ? The answer to that was obvious to Wolfgang and me. There could only be one place for us, in all of Europe, that could be home to this “first growth” event, and that was restaurant Taillevent in Paris. Extraordinary ambience, service and, of course, food—and attention to the minutest details--are the hallmarks of this establishment owned by an old friend, Jean-Claude Vrinat, run with the help of an incredibly able staff led by Jean-Marie Ancher in charge of the service, Nicolas Bonot in charge of wine, and Alain Solivérès in charge of the cuisine.

They came through with flying colors---decanting, pouring, serving more than forty different wines, many with very old corks, and then, at each session, properly timing the service of the food and the wines, and providing dishes that matched beautifully with the wines---all of this accomplished with seeming ease over three long sessions.

Each session started with a Krug champagne. There were three vintages, 1949, 1959 and 1969, a different vintage each session. After sitting down at the table, each meal began with a flight of some of the top vintages of Montrachet DRC selected by Wolfgang ; nine vintages in all were served over three sessions. This was followed by three flights of Romanée Conti. And, with the cheese course, Ch. Yquem 1929, 1959 and 1989, were served - a different vintage each day. Alexandre de Lur Saluces of Ch. Yquem was able to attend only the last session.

Every single bottle came from Wolfgang’s cellar except the Krug Champagnes which were brought by Rémi Krug who attended all three sessions; the 2000 Montrachet and 1954 Romanée Conti which came from the Domaine ; and 1915 Romanée Conti which came from me. Interestingly, very few bottles were off, which is a pleasant surprise in a tasting of this magnitude.

As we sat around the table, it was a scene like nothing I’ve seen before. Here they were, many of the great personalities in the wine world, sharing openly and freely their thoughts as the wines were served ; the wines, which for the most part, they were having for the first time in their lives. My tasting notes, including some of the comments from Wolfgang and the participants, are given in the next section, but I thought I would give below some highlights of the discussions at the table that were particularly spirited and informative.

Around the table—some highlights

Montrachet DRC
1999, 2000. A large majority preferred 1999 because of its elegance. Particularly vociferous supporters of this wine were Eric de Rothschild of Ch. Lafite and Jean Delmas of Ch. Haut Brion. Not surprising. Their wines, after all, express sheer elegance of Bordeaux. However, both Wolfgang and I preferred the 2000 because it had that extra touch of botrytis, which has always been a hallmark of DRC.
1970, 1971. Both 1970 and 1971 were in extraordinary condition. Not one person, including Aubert de Villaine, could believe the freshness of these wines. These were two quite different tasting wines, however. As Jacques Seysses, the proprietor of Domaine Dujac, expressed it : 1971 was like “a pretty woman with a lipstick” and 1970 was like “a pretty woman who didn’t need a lipstick” !
1995, 1996. . Here things were a bit different. The 1996 was the more elegant of the two—Paul Pontallier of Ch. Margaux said, he was absolutely amazed by the purity of the fruit in this wine. But the 1995 had, well, that “extra dimension” as several people put it.
And 1978 ? Without a doubt the greatest white burgundy ever made. Actually, 1978, 1995 and 1996 were served in the same flight which Anne-Claude Leflaive of Domiane Leflaive summed up as follows : 1996 is the “intellect”, 1995 is the “spirit”, and 1978 is the “soul”.

Romanée Conti 1928, 1929. These two were put in two different flights. Both were excellent. In fact, 1929 was sensational. Those who never had old burgundies were hard put to express their amazement at how good it was. As for 1928, Aubert de Villaine said this was the very first time he had this wine himself, and was surprised that it is still doing so well.

Pulling out the old vines in 1945. As we were starting to taste the 1952 vintage, the first wine made after 1945, Aubert de Villaine told us an incredible story of what was discovered when the old vines were pulled out from the Romanée Conti vineyard in 1945. It goes as follows : This all happened in October 1945, after the harvest. The old vines that were getting pulled were several centuries old, original and never grafted. They had perpetuated themselves by the method of “provignage” which consisted of bending the whole vine and burying it in a ditch with one, two, three shoots coming out from the soil in order to give new vines. There were no rows planted as such. The vines were spread out according to the provignage, about 20-25 thousand of them per hectare.
And, what did they find when the vineyard was torn up in 1945 and the soil ploughed ?----mulch ! – a mixture of old vines and shoots that had totally decomposed and mixed with the soil. Still, as de Villaine put it, it was a “thriving, living body” (perversely, I thought of the movie “Alien” !) where, as he said, “the roots of the new vines found the essence of the terroir of Romanée Conti”

Young-vine-old-wines of the early 50’s. This was one of the most unexpected set of DRCs. Unexpected in the sense that no one thought it was going to be so good. The 1952, the first release from the young vines, astonishingly, still had the fresh taste of young vines—even after 50 odd years. One of the top wines of the entire tasting. And 1953 ?—still alive and absolutely beautiful, it had the elegance that reminded us of the great, and very elegant, 1953 Bordeaux vintage, but this seemed more youthful (and was a Burgundy at that). And 1954 ?? Who ever heard of 1954 being any good, anywhere. Yet this was a lovely wine and a favorite of several people at the table. And then the 1955. “Purity of the fruit”, as so many of us exclaimed. A great wine.
(What is surprising is that these four wines were put in totally different flights reflecting their differing characters. I had put 1952 in a flight in the category “tough wines” along with 1928, 1986, 1995 and 1998. The 1953 in “unappreciated” along with 1976, 1989, 1991, 1993. The 1954, I put as “off-vintages but pleasant” along with 1970, 1979, and 1994. And 1955, I called it “structured but under-appreciated” along with 1972, 1980 and 1997).

Color of 1952. This vintage was tasted in the very first flight at the three-day tasting. Wolfgang, in trying to emphasize a unique characteristic of red burgundies, remarked how remarkably rich the wine was in spite of the fact that the color was very light. “That’s right” Jean Delmas interjected. He said, when he saw how the color looked, he wrote down that with that kind of color the wine couldn’t possibly be very good (based on his Bordeaux experience). “And then I tasted it, amazing !”, he said, then, as he made a sweeping gesture with his hand, added “I immediately threw away my notes on the color !”. Welcome to Burgundy 101—color isn’t that important.

1988. I repeated at the table what I had come to believe after tasting the wines from this vintage from various Burgundy growers, including DRC. It had a lot of structure and tannins, I said, but somehow the sweetness of fruit wasn’t showing through, and so I felt pessimistic about how it would develop eventually. Could it be that the grapes were picked a bit too early, I asked. Jacques Seysses seemed to agree and de Villaine looked like he concurred too, but then, the normally mild mannered, Marcel Guigal from Domaine Guigal jumped in. “You are all wrong” he said “this is an outstanding vintage”, stretching out the word outstanding. “It has a superb structure and exceptionally good tannins. You just have to wait” and added vehemently, referring to the apparent lack of fruit “it will come around”. Coming from someone who makes some of the greatest wines in the world that are also very long-lived (his 1966, 1969, and 1978 La Mouline are classics of all time and still youthful), he must know what he is talking about.

1961, 1962, 1964, 1966 Flight. This was quite an exciting series because the wines were so completely different from each other, reflecting the totally different vintage conditions, and yet every one of them was great. We were having quite a discussion on how different the four vintages were when Rémi Krug pointed out that the Krug champagne shows almost identical differences between the vintages: the 1961 shows an enormous depth and structure just like it did in Romanée Conti 1961 which was quite tannic, and, in the same way, 1962 very elegant, 1964 very round and full, 1966 very sinewy, and long lived. He said to me “Bipin, why don’t we do a tasting of these same four vintages from different parts of France: 1961 Burgundy, with 1961 Bordeaux, 1961 Rhone, 1961 Champagne and so on, similarly the 1962s , and so on, a combination of horizontal and vertical tastings? We may see the same type of differences”. I readily agreed.

Terroir. This word was repeated many times but most forcefully when summing up the third day’s tasting, Piero Antinori the proprietor of the Antinori cellars said “Let’s not make any mistake about it. What we are seeing here is terroir. From the oldest wine to the youngest there is a common thread that is unmistakable” The same sentiment was elaborated by Aubert de Villaine when, in his letter to Wolfgang after the tasting, he said “ What was fascinating was the thin but solid line going through these different wines, through the different vintages, in spite of the very different faces this terroir shows, a silky sweet character which is pure pleasure when you catch it”

Elegance. This was another word that was emphasized again and again in describing the wines throughout the three days. It is easy to understand power—it hits you and you immediately react—but to understand elegance and complexity, which is what Romanée Conti is all about, one has to work hard at it. That’s the message that came in loud and clear, and it came from people who knew precisely what complexity and elegance meant.

Responses, after the tasting

Soon after the tasting, messages started to pour in to Wolfgang. “They didn’t know what hit them” is an American expression which aptly describes what they were confessing to. They thanked him for his incredible generosity and for providing them some of the greatest experiences of their lifetimes.

Aubert de Villaine wrote “ For a producer like me, a tasting like this is a great enlightenment, because it helps us to raise our goals and shows us what we have to achieve”. And then thanked Wolfgang for “these privileged moments”

Rémi Krug spoke on behalf of every one who came to the tasting, as he summed up the event this way “ It was magical in every possible way: the collection of wines was, of course, incredible, the food, supremely refined, and the service, and-last but not the least-the friends whom you gathered for this celebration: altogether it made a rare alchemy of seriousness, emotion and immense joy”. “That is what life is all about, when dream becomes reality” he concluded.

Final Thought

On the final day, as the empty wine glasses were taken away by the waiters, and the plates were cleared and table cloth removed, it occurred to me that there was one big difference from the example of the exhibition of the Picasso paintings I gave earlier. The art collector could always repeat the exhibit another day. Here, all that incredible wine was consumed and gone, forever. This event will never be repeated.