2018 Romanee St Vivant

The 2018 Romanée-Saint-Vivant Grand Cru has a delicate and understated bouquet, a little subdued at first, opening with brambly red fruit, sous-bois and desiccated orange peel scents. The aromatics are pretty, elegant and almost unassuming. The palate is medium-bodied with sappy red fruit, quite strict and surprisingly linear. A bit of chewiness and it has a very tight-fisted finish that maybe time will unclench? I hope so. Tasted blind at the Burgfest 2018 red tasting.

The 2018 Romanée-Saint-Vivant Grand Cru is matured in 20% new oak. It has a very intense bouquet of bright red currant, wild strawberry, pomegranate and rose petal aromas that feels sensual and seductive. The medium-bodied palate offers succulent, fleshy, quite grippy tannins that lend this Romanée-Saint-Vivant volume and mass. It is very well balanced and pure, and feels structured, almost Richebourg-like, toward the persistent finish. This is a very serious Grand Cru that will offer 20 to 30 years of drinking pleasure.

The most backward cuvée in the cellar when I visited was the 2018 Romanée-Saint-Vivant Grand Cru, a rich and muscular wine that unwinds to reveal notions of cherries, cassis and berries mingled with nuances of exotic spice and new oak. On the palate, it's full-bodied, fleshy and structured, with refined but youthfully assertive tannins. A wine of considerable presence, this will need its remaining élevage to round out, but it's very promising.