Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, Romanée St. Vivant 2016

95 / 100 Robert Parker
The 2016 Romanée-St-Vivant Grand Cru is super, bursting from the glass with a kaleidoscopic bouquet of potpourri, red berries, cassis, peony and rose petal. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, ample and fine-boned, with tangy acids, superb concentration and an ample chassis of powdery structuring tannins, concluding with a long, fragrant finish. This is a Romanée-St-Vivant that exemplifies the intensity without the weight that distinguishes the Domaine's best wines, and it equals the fabulous 2015 rendition. A morning spent with Aubert de Villaine provided an opportunity to taste the domaine's 2016 and 2017 vintages. From bottle, the 2016s are stunning, equalling or surpassing the profound 2015s. There is a vibrancy and weightless intensity to the wines that mark them out as very special indeed. When the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti produces a great vintage, there's nothing like it in Burgundy, and 2016 is a legitimately great vintage at this address. On the way to our tasting, we passed by the domaine's entire stock of 2016 Echézeaux and Grands-Echézeaux, bottled entirely in magnum. Those wines won't be released in early 2019: "perhaps we'll drink them, or release them later, we haven't decided", said de Villaine, pointing to a stack of bottles that would nonetheless elicit green envy in any other producer of those two appellations. Of vintage 2017, de Villaine reported that the domaine refrained from green harvesting in the belief that the vines' natural yield is the optimal yield. The wines, he observed, are "nicely balanced but slimmer than 2015 or 2016", an analysis with which I wholeheartedly concur, and to which I venture to add that the 2017s are suppler, more open-knit and will be adapted to comparatively near-term consumption. Moreover, after several years of low yields, there will, at last, be a certain quantity of wine to slake the thirst of an adoring—and sometimes, it must be said, uncritical—public. In 2017, it's also the case that the domaine's two monopoles stand head-and-shoulders above their other appellations in terms of depth, breadth and incipient complexity, a rapport that I've attempted to reflect with my scores.
Interim January 2019 Week 1, The Wine Advocate

19 / 20 Jancis Robinson
Vines aged 38 years. 27 hl/ha. Harvested 27-28 September, bottled early March 2018. 1,304 dozen produced. Very slightly redder in colour than the Corton. It smells cooler too, with more whole-bunch freshness at first. Here it’s the fruit and herby freshness that sings and much less spice than on the Corton. Less exotic and more ‘Nordic’ in its purity. The fruit aroma and flavour is redder too, not strawberry but in that direction. The flavour is sweet on the palate even though the wine is bone dry and the sweetness is undercut by the effect of the very slight whole-bunch austerity. The tannins are incredibly fine but not yet smoothed out, adding to the extreme freshness and purity. Tightly wound, the fruit and woodland freshness go on and on. Odd as it may sound, it seems to get more dense in your mouth after it has gone.
https://www.jancisrobinson.com/tastings/search?keywords=co..

95 / 100 Allen Meadow
A more restrained and cooler nose reflects super-fresh and floral-inflected aromas of exceptionally spicy red and dark currant, violet, plum and tea. There is a highly refined mouthfeel to the almost lacy yet concentrated middle weight flavors that possess first-rate complexity on the balanced and wonderfully persistent if youthfully austere finish. This crunchy effort is class in a glass with its emphasis on finesse which is quite different from the evident power and punch of the Corton. Textbook built-to-age RSV.
https://www.burghound.com/tnsearch/index.php?id=271318