Photo: Sasha Wang

By Sasha Wang

Drinking Cheval Blanc 1961 with a paper cup was a fun scene in the movie “Sideways” but in the real world, you may think twice whether you should do it that way. My suggestion is always treating a beautiful Grand Cru wine like a lady, because she deserves it.

As you may recall from my last article (”May the sun shine from Oregon to Chinese New Year in Nevada”), we tasted an Oregon made Pinot Noir, it’s performance was better than we thought, so to compare, we thought it was time to find a typical Pinot Noir from its original region. Nothing could be a better choice than 1986 Domaine de la Romanee-Conti Richeburg Grand Cru, an absolutely typical Pinot Noir from Burgundy, and one of the most famous wines in the world.

Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, often abbreviated to DRC, is located in Cote de Nuits, which is famous for its delicate terroir with special iron-rich limestone soil. With a long history from 13^th century, 7 bottles of wine produced from the grapes of its 7 vineyards earn it the world’s greatest and most expensive reputation.

The taste of Richeburg 1986 is best described with 3 words: berries, earthy, and concentration. Although it’s already quite a back vintage wine, which is supposed to have a ripe nose of black fruits, interestingly, a fill of raspberry and cherry in my nose made me feel the wine is still young and naughty. But when we start to taste it, the whole tone suddenly changed into an earthy full body, with the complex acidity and flavor of blackberry and black pepper on the palate. Well, there might be a thousand hamlets in a thousand people’s glasses, so to speak but for me, the concentration was a little too much, so that the texture was relatively tense.

I would never complain about a wine like DRC. Not only because it’s too expensive to regret, but also because how we think about the moment. There’s one thing that I can tell you, the French Revolution changed France upside down, DRC was of course a part of it, with some famous happy and sad stories. People come and go, but the wines are long last, and we should appreciate it. Do you hear the glass sing, singing the song of cheerful men? It is the music of the people who will enjoy it again.