This will be the legend from this period with ruby color and a violet hue. It exudes young complexity with cinnamon, cardamon, and nutmeg highlighting the pure fruit character of strawberries and raspberries. Flower and sandalwood. It is tight and perfectly integrated with muscular and fabulously formed tannins that frame the wine immaculately. Just a baby still. Better to leave it 10 years more. Drink or hold.

An exceptionally floral yet restrained nose with aromas of both rose and violets that combine with a panoply of spice notes yet the overall impression is classic young RC as the nose is both cool and reserved yet aristocratic. The sweet intense focused detailed and vibrant flavors offer superb drive and punch though there is not the sheer scale of the LT yet they're finer and somehow even purer indeed absolutely crystalline though I kept asking myself how this was possible as the purity of the La Tâche is itself mind blowing. The descriptor of 'power without weight' came to mind again and again as the flavors slide down the throat with no sense of heaviness yet the impact and precision of the presently somewhat austere finish is quite simply hard to believe. In a word this is mind bending and in a visceral sense this is a monumental wine that of real emotional impact. Genius in a glass.

There are more startling complexities in the 2005 Romanee-Conti than in any other wine here today perhaps in the vintage. A stunning high-toned and utterly unique perfume of pink grapefruit blood orange tangerine rind vivid rose petal musk cinnamon sage and cassis seduces the olfactors in kaleidoscopic rotation. I hesitate to court sacrilege or ridicule with Germanic allusions but it is impossible not to imagine a great Pinot scented with Gewurztraminer and Scheurebe. On the palate a pure clean meatiness emerges like butchering a meadow-fed lamb bitter-sweet flowers flying forth in an inner-mouth profusion. Soy and black truffle lend a dark savory note to the proceedings leading the long finishing procession over a path strewn with rose petals. Fear not: despite its silken texture there are abundant tannins woven into this amazing tapestry as well and I am sure those lucky enough to own some can retain it as collateral then leave it to their children safe in the knowledge it has not decayed. Reverential drinking after a dozen or more years would however be my preference.