This is a very firm Echézeaux with incredible tension spreading across the palate thanks to the whistling acidity. The cherry and ganache combination are reminiscent of black forest cake, but there is an array of savory nuances, too. Fallen autumn leaves and underbrush intertwine with fire pit and spicy whole bunch. Set this aside for at least five years to a decade.

The 2022 Echézeaux Grand Cru is absolutely exquisite, not to mention a significant step up in the range. Impossibly silky tannins and deep, penetrating aromatics give the Echézeaux its seductive personality. Medium in body and polished, with phenomenal balance, the Echézeaux shows how compelling the vintage is. There is no heaviness at all, nor any sign of a growing season marked by severe heat and drought.

Echézeaux is expressive, opulent even, its cherry and raspberry fruit shaded by sandalwood. Fresh and harmonious, it firms up on the finish.

The Domaine de la Romanée-Conti's Pinot Noir harvest concluded on 11-12 September with the 2022 Échézeaux Grand Cru, a fleshy and expressive wine that bursts with aromas of sweet dark berries and cherries mingled with notions of incense, orange zest, exotic spices and peonies. Medium to full-bodied, ripe and flamboyant, with a layered, juicy core of fruit, it concludes with a broad, sapid finish. If the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti 2021 vintage was all about flowers and spices, the 2022s are all about fruit. These are rich, generous wines, for the most part very integrated out of the gates, and though they'll surely reward patience, they will not demand it. If one must find a recent analogy, it might be some sort of amalgam of 2018's ripeness and generosity of fruit with the more suave, transparent structure of 2017, but the comparison that came to mind as I tasted the wines was in fact with the domaine's 1964s. Harvest began with the red Corton plots on 30 August, finishing with Échézeaux and Corton-Charlemagne on 13 September. After the historically low yields of 2021, the vines bounced back, delivering a comparatively bountiful crop of between 37 and 43 hectoliters per hectare in Pinot Noir, with good levels of ripeness. Sorting now aims to eliminate desiccated and dehydrated b(more...)