2016 La Tâche, Grand Cru, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, Burgundy

The 2016 La Tâche Grand Cru was picked on September 24–25 at 31hL/ha (the highest of the five crus). It has an utterly sublime bouquet of blackberry, briar, crushed limestone, a dash of cracked black pepper and a little oregano. This is extremely complex and displays exquisite focus, so you could just sit and nose it all day. The palate is beautifully balanced, the spicy red fruit framed by filigreed tannin that belies its backbone. There is a gentle crescendo from start to finish, though being La Tâche, it retains complete control. The precision and detail in the final third are deeply impressive. Less fruit-forward than the 2015, and lightly spiced, with an insistent grip. There is a captivating sense of completeness that will ensure longevity through three or four decades. 1,814 cases were produced.Drink 2025 - 2050Neil Martin, Vinous.com.com (January 2019)

Vines aged 51 years. 31 hl/ha. Harvested 24–25 September. Bottled April/May 2018. 1,814 dozen produced.Lightish ruby. Gorgeously scented with the most seductive, intense and lightly spicy dark-red fruit. A little more spice here. And something almost dusty – a dry mineral note that is tangled up with a hint of vanilla and sweet spice. The tannins are compact, firm, and dry but paper-fine and many-layered. Amazing density and fewer aromatic signs of whole-bunch. Deep and more savoury as it builds in the mouth. It is not so much long as increasingly present after you have no more wine in your mouth, like a presence that remains after someone has left the room.Drink 2029 - 2046julia_harding MW, JancisRobinson.com (January 2019)

More reserved than the Richebourg and Romanée-St-Vivant, the 2016 La Tâche Grand Cru unwinds in the glass with aromas of wild berries, liquorice, rose petal, smoked duck and love, framed by a touch of cedary new oak. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, rich and velvety, with a deep, concentrated, but tight-knit core, its firm chassis of fine-grained, structuring tannins cloaked in succulent fruit, underpinned by juicy acids. The finish is long and reverberative. This is a stunning La Tâche in the making, but it is also one of the more reticent wines in the range and will demand some bottle age.Drink 2026 - 2065William Kelley, Wine Advocate (January 2019)

Fine deep purple, not quite as overwhelming as Richebourg. Complex briary notes with dark red fruit. More savoury, of course. The palate shows this wine's incredible complexity, which is not from a single terroir, more austere up front, then a wealth of joyous juicy fruit, before returning to the stricter side running alongside this incredibly intense coulis of red and black fruit.Jasper Morris MW, InsideBurgundy.com (October 2017)

A touch paler ruby in colour, this has a broodingly seductive fragrance combining red berries, cedary spice and an undertone of stalky whole-bunch. You just want to keep sniffing it, and diving in reveals an underlying berry sweetness that follows through to the plump, fleshy, rounded palate. It's full of copious loganberry fruit, with a continuing splash of cedar and sandalwood-like oak in combination. The texture is sleek and supple, the tannins almost imperceptible and beautifully rounded until they creep up on you gradually, combined with the juicy acidity, lending satisfying structural finesse and length.Drink 2030 - 2040Anthony Rose, Decanter.com (January 2019)

As is often the case, the highly perfumed nose is the most floral-inflected of the range with its equally cool and restrained array of violet and rose petal scents that combine with an extraordinary group of spice elements on the essence of red currant aromas. The mouthfeel of the imposingly-scaled and powerful flavours is again robust yet refined with just as much minerality as the Richebourg adding even more lift to the almost painfully intense and extravagantly long finish that goes and goes. There is a hint of backend warmth, but it's not enough to materially detract from the overall sense of harmony though I underscore that the '16 LT is one very firm effort that will require decades to shed its tannic shell fully. With that said, this is genuinely brilliant.Drink from 2041 onwardallen_meadows, burghound_com.com (January 2019)