2016 Vosne Romanee, Aux Reignots, 1er Cru, Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair, Burgundy
Critics reviews
Rich purple-black, this wine has a backward nose but suggests huge concentration. There is a faint reduction, but there is a huge wealth of fruit behind it. Abundant minerals dance inside a superb intensity of fruit. It is beautifully integrated and has a magical, seamless finish. It is very suave and very intense. The persistence is extraordinary.
Jasper Morris MW, InsideBurgundy.com (October 2017)
An intensely floral-suffused nose of various red berry and plum scents is both exuberantly fresh and spicy. It is immediately evident that the medium-weight flavours are both more refined and more mineral-driven while delivering the seemingly contradictory combination of being at once muscular yet delicate on the serious and youthfully austere bitter cherry pit-inflected finale. As is usually the case, this is a wine of class and sophistication that should age effortlessly.
Drink from 2031 onward
Allen Meadows, Burghound.com (January 2019)
100% new oak. Barrel sample.
Very dark. Glowing purple. It's not as aromatic as some but very deep and dense. Almost meaty. Great energy. Refined and muscular. Ambitious. It is very long and builds on the end.
Drink 2025 - 2040
Jancis Robinson MW, JancisRobinson.com (January 2018)
The 2016 Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Aux Reignots has an intense bouquet with dark cherries, violets, a hint of cold, wet limestone and blood orange. The palate is medium-bodied with a silky opening, plush and yet tensile thanks to that silver bead of acidity. The quality of the vineyard really shines through in this Reignots, the tip of the tongue tingling with spice, the back absorbing those waves of crushed black and blue fruit. Gorgeous!
Drink 2022 - 2045
Neil Martin, Wine Advocate (December 2017)
Bright red-ruby. Aromas of black raspberry and pungent minerality show a deep note of coffee reduction. Large-scaled, dry and classic, and quite backward and uncompromising today, with flavours of dark berries, smoke and crushed rock saturating the palate. Dusty tannins spread out horizontally on the vibrating, stony back end. Here's another 2016 that will require patience. Superb potential.
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous.com (January 2018)
About this WINE
Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair
The Liger-Belair family has a glorious history combining the church, the army and the wine trade. The first General Liger-Belair acquired the Chateau de Vosne-Romanée in 1815, as well as various vineyards, and when his nephew and adopted heir married a Marey heiress, the empire grew rapidly: at one point the Liger-Belairs owned La Tâche, La Romanée, La Grande Rue and significant holdings of Clos de Vougeot and Chambertin, along with an array of Vosne-Romanée premiers crus including vines in Malconsorts, Chaumes, Reignots, Suchots and Brûlées.
Unfortunately, complicated succession issues meant that the whole domaine was sold at auction in August 1933. Canon Just Liger-Belair and Comte Michel Liger-Belair between them managed to save La Romanée and small holdings of Aux Reignots and Les Chaumes. Comte Michel’s son Comte Henri devoted his career to the army, reaching the rank of general like his forebear, so the vines were looked after by sharecroppers and the wines sold through négociants.
Vicomte Louis-Michel Liger-Belair decided to recreate the family wine domaine in 2000, beginning with two plots of Vosne-Romanée and premier cru Les Chaumes. Two years later he took back control of Aux Reignots and La Romanée, although a commercial contract with Bouchard Père & Fils to distribute a proportion of the latter continued until 2006. In that year also a further 5.5 hectares of vineyards, on a farming contract from the Lamadon family, brought the domaine up to its present size.
The aim is to pick quickly once the grapes are ripe, sort them thoroughly on a table de tri, remove all the stalks and then cool the grapes to below 15ºC/59ºF for a week of pre-maceration. After the fermentation, using more pumping over than punching down, Louis-Michel likes a significant settling off the lees so that the wines will not need racking. They are raised mostly in new wood from two different coopers and three forests, then assembled in tank after 13 to 15 months and bottled two to three months later without fining or filtration.
Jasper Morris MW, Burgundy Wine Director and author of the award-winning Inside Burgundy comprehensive handbook.
Vosne-Romanée
The small commune of Vosne-Romanée is the Côte de Nuits’ brightest star, producing the finest and most expensive Pinot Noir wines in the world.. Its wines have an extraordinary intensity of fruit which manages to combine power and finesse more magically than in any other part of the Côte d’Or. The best examples balance extraordinary depth and richness with elegance and breeding.
Situated just north of Nuits-St Georges, Vosne-Romanée boasts eight Grand Cru vineyards, three of which include the suffix Romanée, to which the village of Vosne appended its name in 1866. The famous La Romanée vineyard was formerly known as Le Cloux but was renamed in 1651, presumably after the Roman remains found nearby. In 1760 the property was bought by Prince de Conti, and subsequently became known as Romanée-Conti.Vosne is the home of the phenomenally fine wines of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti; divine wines that are, as they say, not for everyone but for those who can afford them. The region also boasts some of the world’s most talented, quality-conscious and pioneering producers: Domaine de la Romanée-Conti of course, but also Henri Jayer, Lalou Bize-Leroy, René Engel, as well as the Grivot and Gros families, to name but a few.
Vosne-Romanée has the greatest concentration of top vineyards in the Côte d’Or, including the tiny Grand Crus of the astonishing La Romanée-Conti (a monopoly of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti producing about 600 cases a year), the classy, complex La Romanée (a monopoly of Vicomte Liger-Belair, but until 2002 bottled under Bouchard Père et Fils, producing a minuscule 300 cases or so a year) and the little-known La Grande Rue. As the name suggests, this runs up the side of the road out of Vosne. Originally a Premier Cru, it was rightly upgraded in 1992, although its rich, spicy, floral Pinots are yet to reach their real potential under Domaine Lamarche who hold it as a monopoly.
By convention the wines of neighbouring Flagey-Echézeaux are considered part of Vosne-Romanée. These include the large, very variable 30-hectare Echézeaux (divided between 84 different growers) and the more consistent, silky, intense, violet-scented Grands Echézeaux Grands Crus.
La Tâche is another monopoly of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. It is explosively seductive with a peerless finesse, and is almost as good as their legendary eponymous wine. Richebourg is one of Burgundy’s most voluptuous wines and is capable of challenging La Tâche in some years, while Romanée-St Vivant, which takes its name from the monastery of St Vivant built around 900AD in Vergy, has a lovely silky finesse but is slightly less powerful.
If that wasn’t enough, Vosne-Romanée also boasts some absolutely magnificent Premiers Crus headed by Clos des Réas, Les Malconsorts (just south of La Tâche, and arguably of Grand Cru quality) and Les Chaumes on the Nuits-St Georges side, Cros Parantoux (made famous by Henri Jayer), Les Beaux Monts and Les Suchots on the Flagey-Echézeaux border. The old maxim that ‘there are no common wines in Vosne-Romanée’ may not be strictly true, but it is not far off.
Drinking dates vary, but as a general rule of thumb Grand Crus are best drunk from at least 10 to 25 years, while Premier Crus can be enjoyed from 8 to 20 years, and village wines from 5 to 12 years.
There are no white wines produced in Vosne-Romanée.
- 99 hectares of village Vosne-Romanée.
- 56 hectares of Premier Cru vineyards (14 in all). Foremost vineyards include Les Gaudichots, Les Malconsorts, Cros Parentoux, Les Suchots, Les Beauxmonts, En Orveaux and Les Reignots.
- 75 hectares of Grand Cru vineyards: Romanée-Conti, La Romanée, La Tache, Richebourg, Romanée St Vivant, La Grande Rue, Grands Echézeaux, Echézeaux.
- Recommended producers: Domaine de la Romanée Conti, Leroy, Cathiard, Engel, Rouget, Grivot, Liger Belair.
Pinot Noir
Pinot Noir is probably the most frustrating, and at times infuriating, wine grape in the world. However when it is successful, it can produce some of the most sublime wines known to man. This thin-skinned grape which grows in small, tight bunches performs well on well-drained, deepish limestone based subsoils as are found on Burgundy's Côte d'Or.
Pinot Noir is more susceptible than other varieties to over cropping - concentration and varietal character disappear rapidly if yields are excessive and yields as little as 25hl/ha are the norm for some climats of the Côte d`Or.
Because of the thinness of the skins, Pinot Noir wines are lighter in colour, body and tannins. However the best wines have grip, complexity and an intensity of fruit seldom found in wine from other grapes. Young Pinot Noir can smell almost sweet, redolent with freshly crushed raspberries, cherries and redcurrants. When mature, the best wines develop a sensuous, silky mouth feel with the fruit flavours deepening and gamey "sous-bois" nuances emerging.
The best examples are still found in Burgundy, although Pinot Noir`s key role in Champagne should not be forgotten. It is grown throughout the world with notable success in the Carneros and Russian River Valley districts of California, and the Martinborough and Central Otago regions of New Zealand.
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Description
Rich purple-black, this wine has a backward nose but suggests huge concentration. There is a faint reduction, but there is a huge wealth of fruit behind it. Abundant minerals dance inside a superb intensity of fruit. It is beautifully integrated and has a magical, seamless finish. It is very suave and very intense. The persistence is extraordinary.
Jasper Morris MW, InsideBurgundy.com (October 2017)
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