DRC Corton 2015 750mL

The Domaine de la Romanée-Conti 2015 Corton Grand Cru wafts from the glass with a pretty bouquet of plum, red cherry, rose hip and herbs, notions of darker fruits and rich soil emerging only with extended aeration. On the palate, the wine is medium to full-bodied, sapid and penetrating, with vibrant acids and an assertive chassis of firm, youthfully stemmy tannins—though there's sufficient mid-palate depth to subsume those in the fullness of time. While the domaine's Corton, from the vineyards of Prince Florent de Mérode, is still a work in progress, the 2015 is the most successful rendition to date, and the balmy, low-yielding vintage seems to have played to the hill's strengths. This was the first of DRC's reds to be harvested in 2015, picked on September 5 at yields of 22 hectoliters per hectare, and unlike the rest of the domaine's wines, it was 20% destemmed.