Tasted blind at the annual "Burgfest" tasting in Beaune. The 2012 La Romanée Grand Cru from Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair has a slightly reduced bouquet, a little meatiness coming through, touches of Provençal herbs and that palpable sense of mineralité. The palate is medium-bodied with lace-like but tensile tannin, exquisite poise, feminine and elegant, gradually building to a very composed finish with beautifully integrated oak. This feels so weightless in the mouth, yet there is wonderful intensity and intellect. Certainly, this is one of the wines of the vintage. - Neal Martin

Relatively strong reduction flattens the fruit and renders the nose impossible to comment on. Otherwise there is excellent richness to the cool mineral-tinged and seductively textured middle weight flavors that possess a really lovely sense of underlying tension on the clean and pure finish that delivers strikingly good length. 2012 is not an opulent vintage for this wine, in fact it's almost delicate but the gorgeous balance and mid-palate concentration should ensure a very long life. This Zen-like effort should one day be a truly stunning wine. Note that my conclusion assumes that the reduction displayed by the nose eventually dissipates with age. 2032+