2006 Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair La Romanée Grand Cru

Served from magnum, the 2006 La Romanée Grand Cru replicates the seductive aromatics that it showed in bottle last year: fragrant red berries, that hint of orange peel and here, perhaps showing a little more opulence. The palate is medium-bodied with silky smooth tannin. The acidity keeps the La Romanée on its tip-toes, here perhaps showing a touch more depth and grip than the bottle version, but still with that twist of bitter cherry on the finish. It is a classy number, no doubt, and it will bestow those fortunate enough to own a bottle 3 or 4 decades of pleasure. Tasted November 2016.

Christmas cake, blood orange, mint, white pepper, dried flowers and tobacco are some of the many nuances that grace the 2006 La Romanée. Noble, understated and classy to the core, the 2006 can be enjoyed today, but it remains tightly wound, energetic and could certainly use another few years in bottle. A compelling interplay of exotic spices and bright, saline-inflected notes grace the finish. This is a superb wine for the vintage.

Liger-Belair's monopole 2006 La Romanee is impressively redolent of game, wood smoke, strawberry- raspberry preserves, and exotic spices. This coats and clings to the palate with sappy and invigorating fruit, spice, and smoke, as well as with dense, fine-grained tannins. Penetrating in the finish and restlessly alternating between intensely gamey, high-toned fruit distillate, jam, and spice wavelengths. This needs several years of restful evolution but there is little question that some sort of impressive animal is going to emerge over the coming decade or more. Louis-Michel Liger-Belair reported higher potential alcohol levels this year than in 2005, but also maintains that the nature of the ambient yeasts in 2006 accounted for a thankfully inefficient conversion, so that finished alcohols were not noticeably higher. Triage in his cellars, he maintains, was and will in future vintages remain "two to three percent," thanks to restriction of yields and meticulous vine management. Liger-Belair remains a proponent of gentle extraction but high levels of new wood. What I misleadingly announced in issue 170 as "a new negociant side of the business" is in fact an arrangement whereby Liger-Belair himself farms around 15 acres that had previously been tended by a grower who once enjoyed a share-cropping arrangement with Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair (during the long period when their wines were pledged to Bouchard). Half of the acreage in question yields Bourgogne and is genuinely sold as a negociant project, but the rest will be treated to the domaine's vine-papering, biodynamic regimen, including the horse plowing of whose revival they were among the earliest and most conspicuous proponents. Liger-Belair reminds me, however, that it will take time for the effect of this attention to be felt. Beginning with this vintage also, all of the Liger-Belair monopole La Romanee and all of their Vosne Reignots are estate-bottled, none being sold any longer to Bouchard. A Becky Wasserman Selection (various importers), Le Serbet; fax 011-333-80-24-29-70