Ok I will admit DRC is the best breakfast.

Wilson Daniels House party in St Helena last week. The wines of the 2006 Vintage: Vosne Romanée, Echezeaux, Grands Echezeaux, Romanée St Vivant, Richebourg, La Tache, Romanée Conti and Montrachet.

The Vosne Romanée follows the 1999 and 2002 and is a second pass on vineyards they control. (I recall 2002 was La Tache exclusively.) The wine needs more time, but there is promise. It is pretty with notes of lavender and tobacco with good length and balance. There is ripeness and vibrant fruit on the front of the Echezeaux with a pleasant velvety texture but the fades quietly on the finish. The Grand Echezeaux is robust with cherry and bacon notes, a refined velvety mouth-feel and good length. The Romanée St Vivant is a bit young to judge, the fruit is strawberry and cherry, the nose is tea-notes and rose-water, and the finish is medium plus, but the wine as it is tasted on this day, the pieces have yet to fall into place, the wine is lacking in complexity and definition. The bold flavors of the Richebourg marked a dramatic shift for the professionals in the room. Dark cherry fruits, round fleshy center with notes of pepper, Asian five spice, nutmeg, the finish was medium plus and the lingering impression of  “meatiness” in the wine stayed with me as I was quite impressed with the full-bodied nature of the experience. The La Tache was subtle to a fault. The floral notes of the garden were in evidence, rose petal and lavender, and on the tongue, strawberry tea. Knowing what I am tasting makes for a very different focus and patience. Knowing I am tasting La Tache, finding many of the characteristics and flavors that I have experienced before, I am as happy as a  bee in the Queen’s garden, but if I was tasting this wine blind, I doubt that I would have the patience to find the greatness in the youth of the wine in the glass,  the 2006  wines as a vintage are quieter and reward those who are focused listeners. No doubt there will be someone who will taste the 06 La Tache and it will be the first DRC wine they have ever tasted and that person might easily wonder what all the fuss is about. Five words sum up the tasting experience of Romanée-Conti--”It’s Good To Be King”. An evocative nose of red fruit with tobacco and spice, a graceful and balanced with a 75 second finish.

Always the Montrachet is tasted last, after the reds. Often the Montrachet wins by this sequence because the wine offers a poetic experience equal to any red on the planet, and as a white wine, drinks “better” as a young wine and has an element of refreshment and brightness that is welcome after the tasting of the red Burgundies. This day, the Romanée-Conti towered over the other wines.

The Montrachet is rich, but much of the richness seems to be connected to the hint of botryitis that is allowed to inhabit the vineyard. The wine has the expected balance and length, but the first descriptor I wrote down was not a fruit flavor but butterscotch.

My comment to my fellow tasters was that in the past, as I tasted the reds, they build to a crescendo as they become more complex and more compelling, starting with the Echezeaux and ending with the Romanée-Conti, then when I taste the Montrachet, I have been so wowed by that wine that I think, when I look back at the overall tasting, what I thought that was the movie (tasting the reds) now I realize that was only the trailer for the Montrachet.  Yes, I know it’s me trying to be funny and it’s a bit off the cuff and not for print and all that, but there is a truth to the emotions of the tasting experience when I have had these wine in the same sequence before that I expected the Montrachet to take the stage, in a commanding way and that did not happen. Is it a beautiful wine? Of course. The 2006 is a star but not an icon.