Future Memories: DRC 2022 In Bottle

BY NEAL MARTIN | FEBRUARY 18, 2025

“Do you remember the first time?”

“Maybe. A lot of life has passed between then and now. But one bottle sticks in the mind. I was living in my first flat, a single-bedroom pad in Crystal Palace, roomy with a high ceiling, shabby-chic but more shabby than chic. The dinky kitchen was painted in bold rustic hues, ochre and olive green, with copper pots and pans hanging from the ceiling plus a small wine rack of around 20 bottles—none of which were remarkable except one. That was the 1992 Grands-Échézeaux from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.”

“Where did you get that from?”

“It was a Christmas gift, a festive incentive to keep the orders rolling. In 1996, I had just begun my first job in wine, buying and shipping vino for the burgeoning Japanese market. That gift of a DRC sounds extravagant today, but keep in mind that back then, it was not particularly expensive, simply a Burgundy deemed one of the best. In any case, I didn’t care about monetary value. It was a chance to enjoy a delicious wine and further my education. The bottle was awaiting the right moment.”

“And that was when?”

“An old school friend and his better half came for dinner. We were classmates at grammar school. We both had a competitive streak. Who achieved the highest grades? Who had the coolest taste in music? The usual teenage stuff. Maybe that desire to outperform hadn’t completely faded and coerced me to pull out the Grands-Échézeaux. I rustled up sea bass and new potatoes, the outer limits of my culinary skills. My opening gambit, a 1973 Meursault from Robert Ampeau, smelled of old socks and went down the sink. Not to worry, as my precious DRC was about to ride to the rescue.”

“Did it?”

“No. Ninety-two was a great vintage for white Burgundy, but the reds suffered excessive yields. Alas, I was unfamiliar with the minutiae of vintages. Even a bottle the pedigree of DRC was unable to disguise its stalkiness, a Scrooge-like meanness. We sat around the table willing the wine to live up to expectations until I admitted that it didn’t taste particularly pleasant. It was a valuable lesson. A label, a reputation, is no guarantee of quality. This principle became a cornerstone of how I approach criticism: never prejudge the wine in front of you. In any case, a few months later, I was fortunate to drink a bottle that elicited pure elation.”

“What was that?”

“A 1990 Richebourg. It was a long boozy lunch at The Arches, a local bistro whose patriarch, the late Harry Gill, was a fanatic wine collector and had accumulated a deep well of DRC, as he was wont to remind you every time you visited, bless him. He had invited some reprobates from the wine trade to partake in a few bottles, and each of us had given a weak excuse to the office as to the reason why we wouldn’t be returning to our desks. We crammed into a small patio area in the rear of the bistro, a sun trap on that hot June afternoon. We were all young and rowdy back then, full of tit-for-tat banter and bonhomie, devotees to the joy of wine. We had already martyred several bottles when Harry announced in his own inimitable way that he would open something “proper.” Before I had time to untangle “proper” from its surrounding expletives, I spotted that familiar black-and-white font. Funny how a font can incite a rush of endorphins. I held out my glass and soon enough, Richebourg glistened like liquid ruby in my glass, refracting the sun’s rays. Its aroma was intoxicating. It tasted of flamboyance, luxurious and brimming with grandeur. The “lunch” lasted way beyond closing time, wanton libation having erased the details of the last hours. Yet the following morning, nursing the worst hangover ever inflicted upon humankind, I considered the nausea was worth it…because of that Richebourg.”

“Did you write about it on your fledgling website?”

“No. This was a few years before Wine-Journal was hatched in June 2003. By then, I had amassed quite a few firsthand encounters with the fabled three-letter domaine: a 1985 Échézeaux after karaoke (where I had unleashed my inner Lionel Richie to sing an impassioned “Three Times a Lady” in Roppongi Hills), and a magnum of 1985 La Tâche in Kowloon (accompanied by my body weight in white truffles). Despite the steady flow of fine wine reviews on Wine-Journal and its unexpected popularity, the site looked as if it had been cobbled together in five minutes. It took more than that…around ten. I was less computer-literate than my nan. Miraculously, I had managed to teach myself basic coding, enough to build the site’s architecture, but it needed to look professional, even if the prose was anything but.”

“What did you do?”

“I enlisted a friend, Joel, a dab hand at this website malarkey. He would drive down to my second flat in West Norwood in his third-hand yellow Lotus, work on the design in my spare room surrounded by stacks of vinyl gathering dust and reminisce about the pre-digital age. Not having two pennies to rub together, I compensated Joel in the currency of wine. One evening, after a hard day’s work and heated debate about Prince’s best B-side (“17 Days”), I promised to open a 1962 Grands-Échézeaux. I had picked it up for pittance due to low ullage, those greedy angels having taken more than their fair share. I forewarned him that it would be undrinkable. Still, we jabbered away until the time came to insert a corkscrew. The cork came out intact. Oxygen met Pinot. My pokey kitchen filled with an intoxicating perfume. Words cannot describe its profundity. It was not a wine; it was a magic potion. We laughed incredulously as this presumed moribund wine nonchalantly redefined the concept of freshness, vitality and complexity. We talk about the bottle misty-eyed to this day.”

“So, was the website design a success. Did it make a difference?”

“I was perceived differently because a smart design telegraphs importance. It motivated me to upgrade the content whilst keeping its levity and humor. Anyway, life was getting serious with the ominous prospect of fatherhood, for which I was patently ill-equipped. In July 2005, I was due at Kings College Hospital for a prenatal scan, which clashed with an important client’s visit from Japan. Lunch was at Clarks in Kensington. I noted that I’d have to dash off early, lest the mother-to-be assume that the 1961 Richebourg was more important than a baby and she’d be better off a single mother. I missed the gynecological discussion about the ins and outs, mainly outs, of childbirth, earning an admonishing stare from the midwife as I pelted into the surgery out of Richebourg-tinged breath.”

“Were you working for Robert Parker then?”

“No, but I knew he read my site. He approached me in the summer of 2006 with a message out of the blue. It was obviously a sliding doors moment. Opportunities like that come once in a lifetime, if at all. It felt surreal, something that happens to someone else. It couldn’t have come at a better time, what with a one-year-old baby in tow. But without going into detail, the deal skidded off the tracks due to a series of events outside either of our control. Suddenly, the rest of my imagined life was slipping through my fingers. On what felt like the bleakest weekend, I invited a close friend for supper to drown my sorrows with a 1964 Richebourg. Good wine and good friendship were cathartic. I felt better afterwards. Within a few days I had resolved the situation with my new employer and, in retrospect, it was the best thing that could have happened because I could continue writing about Bordeaux and Burgundy. Things happen for a reason, even if it doesn’t seem like it at the time.”

“Had you visited Domaine de la Romanée-Conti by that time?”

“It was around that time. The first few visits were just myself and Aubert de Villaine. I was taken aback by the winery’s simplicity: no airs or graces, no flashy artwork on the walls, no pretention. It felt like entering an empty rural church. Afterwards, Aubert poured a white blind that I guessed was not the Montrachet but their Bâtard-Montrachet, the cuvée they never commercially released. I can’t recall the vintage, but I felt honored to be accepted in this hallowed place.”

“Any other bottles you remember?”

“Certainly, at the dinner on the Cutty Sark that Corney & Barrow organized on a nippy night in February 2019. That saw not just the most surprising Burgundy, but perhaps the most surprising wine I have encountered. Around 70 guests boarded the dry-docked clipper in Greenwich that I had visited as a school kid, though that had not involved black-tie attire or flagons of Burgundy. The highlight was Aubert de Villaine pouring a bottle blind to a rapt audience. He divulged that the bottle was a Romanée-Conti and invited each table to guess the vintage. I proffered 1979. It was fresh and tensile, exuding transparency, but definitely not from a warm vintage. Everyone was wrong. There was a glint in his eye when he revealed the vintage to be 1965, one of the most derided seasons of all time. It prompted gasps across the deck. How could such a deplorable vintage manifest a wine so enchanting, and moreover, one that had lasted for over five decades? What next, the Cutty Sark setting sail down the Thames?”

“Enough walking down memory lane. Let’s get down to the task at hand. This is supposed to be about the domaine’s 2022s in bottle.”

Seated in that DRC masterclass on a February morning in 2025, as I have done every year since 1998, I contemplated what was before me, what I was really looking at. Domaine de la Romanée-Conti is freighted with meaning and expectations. Opening the brochure, I perused the quantities of each cuvée produced. Then, I began to wonder about the lucky souls who will one day drink these 2022s. Where and when? Most importantly, with whom? These are so much more than wines. They are catalysts for future memories, like those I’ve amassed myself since that very first bottle.