2023 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti: Through the Dark

BY ANTONIO GALLONI | MARCH 12, 2026

The annual tasting of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti’s new releases provided a terrific opportunity to taste the domaine’s complete range and check in on a few older wines as well. Co-Managers Bertrand de Villaine and Perrine Fenal presented the vintage and wines, continuing a tradition that goes back several decades.

The 2023 reds are dark, powerful wines, surprisingly so for a year marked by an unusual combination of large grapes, high juice yields and elevated ripeness. Even with all that intensity, the wines still express plenty of site character, the single most important attribute when it comes to Burgundy. The 2023s needed a few hours to open, more than any recent vintage I can remember. Initially quite brooding and tannic, the 2023s started to show more brightness and Pinot character after about two hours. These are wines for readers who have time on their side.

All the reds come in above 14% alcohol, a rare occurrence here. La Tâche is the most opulent of the wines. It boasts off-the-charts textural richness and shocking intensity. Sugars were very slow to finish, which necessitated racking the wine into tank to allow fermentations to conclude naturally. Richebourg sits at the opposite end of the stylistic spectrum within the context of the year. It is the most classically Burgundian of the wines in that it shows notable translucency right out of the gate.

Turning to the whites, the Corton-Charlemagne is quite exotic, while the Montrachet is utterly sublime. The 2023 Montrachet is the last wine made before the domaine was forced to take out a third of their vines. That parcel will remain fallow for three years. A decade or more will likely pass before fruit is ready to go into the Montrachet bottling. DRC’s Montrachet is already one of the world’s rarest and most expensive wines. It is about to become even rarer, and therefore likely more expensive, too. Readers who can still find bottles would do well to snap them up, especially right now when the world is, sadly, in a state of turmoil.

The 2023s in the Vineyard & Cellar

The growing season got off to a very cold start. Temperatures approached the frost danger zone in early April and remained cool into May, when several rain events brought elevated disease pressure. Conditions improved in late May, leading to a relatively fast flowering that took place from May 20th to June 10th. A brief hailstorm hit Echézeaux, but it does not appear to have been problematic.

Rain and heat episodes alternated in the weeks that followed. July and August saw a good bit of rain, which led to berries sizing up and slowed ripening. Disease pressure was a constant theme throughout this period. Crop thinning to both regulate yield and eliminate underripe bunches was essential. Temperatures soared at harvest time, causing shrivel on the vine, sunburn and leading to dangerous conditions for vineyard workers. Late-season heat spikes are not uncommon in some regions, Napa Valley being an example, but they are very rare in Burgundy. Sugars soared. Timing of the harvest and selection in both the field and at the sorting table were essential. Harvest began on September 5th in Echézeaux and wrapped up on the 17th in Echézeaux and Grands Echézeaux. Montrachet, which for decades was brought in last, was picked along with the reds, in the middle of harvest.

The 2023s were vinified with 100% whole clusters. Malolactic fermentations finished quickly and were completely done by winter, except the Echézeaux and Corton, which underwent malolactic fermentation in spring. Wines were racked once during élevage and blended about a month earlier than was the norm a few years ago. The 2023s were bottled from January to May 2025.

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