The 2016 La Romanée Grand Cru has an intense bouquet with extraordinarily pure black and blueberry fruit, beautifully integrated oak, wilted violets emerging with time. It has more flamboyance than the Romanée-Conti tasted the following day, a little more luster. The palate is very well balanced, balancing on a high-wire, paradoxically intense yet one of the most backward and introspective.
Reviews:
- Wine Advocate: The 2016 La Romanée Grand Cru has an intense bouquet with extraordinarily pure black and blueberry fruit, beautifully integrated oak, wilted violets emerging with time. It has more flamboyance than the Romanée-Conti tasted the following day, a little more luster. The palate is very well balanced, balancing on a high-wire, paradoxically intense yet one of the most backward and introspective La Romanées that I have encountered from barrel, dense and unforgiving at the moment. This will require serious bottle age, at least a decade, but I love the salinity that kicks in on the finish and the extremely long aftertaste. Outstanding.
Producer Information
Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair, founded in 2000, is a relatively new wine producer in Burgundy, although the Liger-Belair family have owned vineyards in Vosne-Romanée since 1815. The domaine makes a range of grand and premier cru wines from vineyards in Nuits-Saint-Georges and Vosne-Romanée, with the tiny monopole of La Romanée providing Comte Liger-Belair’s flagship wine.Louis Liger-Belair, a former general in Napoleon’s army, acquired a vineyard holdings during the state sell-off of estates confiscated under the French Revolution – including the impressive Château de Vosne-Romanée. The Liger-Belairs held a good portion of land in the southern Côte de Nuits in the 19th Century, owning La Romanée and La Tâche as well as large portions of Clos de Vougeot and Chambertin, and a handful of premier cru vineyards.Much of the land was sold off in 1933 under Burgundy’s complicated Napoleonic inheritance laws. What was left was farmed out to local vignerons and the wares sold to negociants.
