Romanee-Conti

Records of Romanée-Conti trace back to the Abbey of Saint-Vivant, which held the plot under the name *Cru de Clos*. In 1631 it passed by marriage to the Flemish Croonembourg family and was renamed *La Romanée* — the origin of that name remains uncertain. By the 1750s, wines from the vineyard were already selling at six to seven times the price of Clos de Vougeot.

In 1760, Louis François I de Bourbon, Prince of Conti, acquired the site for 8,000 livres through a proxy; by 1764 the vineyard bore his title. The Prince reserved the wine for his personal cellar and never sold it commercially. After the Revolution the estate was confiscated by the French state in 1793 and auctioned the following year alongside La Tâche.

Julien Ouvrard purchased the plot in 1819 for 78,000 francs. The decisive acquisition came in 1869, when Jacques-Marie Duvault-Blochet — ancestor of today's de Villaine family — bought the vineyard. The last pre-phylloxera vintage was bottled in 1945 from a tiny yield of roughly 2.5 hl/ha, producing just 600 bottles. The old vines were uprooted, the vineyard left fallow, and replanted with grafted rootstocks in 1947; the first post-replanting vintage appeared in 1952. Organic farming was adopted across the estate from 1985. The AOC was established in 1936.

Romanée-Conti is a 1.88 ha monopole in Vosne-Romanée, sitting at the very heart of the grand cru cluster — Richebourg to the north, Romanée-Saint-Vivant to the east, La Grande Rue to the south, La Romanée to the west. An 1794 auction catalogue observed that "the western edge is higher than the eastern" and that the plot "receives the morning sun in every season."

Pinot Noir is the principal variety; up to 15% Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, and Pinot Gris are technically permitted but never used. Regulations require minimum 9,000 vines per hectare and 11.5% potential alcohol. Authorised yields reach 35 hl/ha, yet the estate works far below that threshold — the five-year average from 2003–2007 was just 26 hl/ha. Annual production amounts to roughly 450 cases (5,000–6,000 bottles).

The wine draws an 1794 catalogue description already anticipating its character: it "always improves as it approaches its eighth or tenth year." Early accounts speak of violets, cherry, and a texture of "velvet and satin in the bottle" — a reputation for floral aromatics and silken mouthfeel that has followed the wine for two and a half centuries.

Domaine de la Romanée-Conti has been the sole owner since 1869, holding the entire 1.88 ha as a monopole. No other domaine produces wine from this site. The estate runs as a *société civile* jointly owned by the de Villaine and Leroy (later Bize-Leroy) family lines. Viticulture has been fully organic since 1985, with biodynamic practices on selected parcels. Horses rather than tractors work the soil to avoid compaction; severe pruning and green harvesting suppress yields to around 25 hl/ha; every cluster and berry passes through triage tables before fermentation. Average vine age currently stands at roughly 53 years.