Usually, choosing between La Tâche and Romanée-Conti is like choosing between your two favourite children. Not this year. The 2012 Romanée-Conti is one of the most spellbinding that I have tasted since I began 17 years ago. The bouquet is quite astonishing with brilliant delineation and focus, an almost disorientating sense of mineralité that soars from the glass and leaves you speechless. The palate is perfectly proportioned with a sensational line of acidity, brimming over with energy and frisson. This flirts with perfection and you know, one day it might actually achieve it. Just 350 cases produced. (NM)

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The surprisingly expressive nose is almost completely dominated by various floral aromas that include violets, lavender and rose petal. There is of course a broad array of spice elements to the red and black currant aromas but they are nuances compared to the floral characters. The wonderfully intense and concentrated middle weight plus flavors possess arguably even more dry extract that, for the moment anyway, pushes the firm tannic spine completely to the background and as such the mouth feel is incredibly rich and opulent. While Romanée-Conti is almost always astonishingly complex it is not always more so than the La Tâche but in 2012 the king of complexity in the DRC range is indisputably Romanée-Conti. There is also a remarkable amount of minerality and the overall impression is one of seamless harmony. While I don't think that the 2012 Romanée-Conti will be able to rival the 2009 and 2010 versions, it's almost certainly going to be close.

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