La Romanée, Bouchard Père et Fils 2001

The 2001 La Romanée is endowed with striking inner sweetness, deep color and striking palate presence. Layers of dark red stone fruit, violet and spice blossom effortlessly as they grow to flesh out the wine's frame. The 2001 is an unusually juicy, supple La Romanée, yet those qualities make the 2001 incredibly appealing. This is another impressive wine, especially within the context of a vintage that has required quite a bit of time to reveal all of its potential. Harvest took place on September 16.

Surprisingly forward and expressive for young La Romanée with incredibly concentrated, smoky, slightly oaky, spicy black fruit aromas that lead to velvety, dense, tight, understated, broad scaled flavors of stunning length. The depth here is nothing short of mind blowing and this is clearly a notch up from the 2000 if not quite as promising as either the '98 or the '99. Still, with the astonishing level of extract, this could conceivably surprise on the upside.