The 2020 Montrachet Grand Cru is brilliant, uniting all the breadth and plenitude of which this vineyard is capable with all the work that's been quietly going on at the domaine to bring greater precision and integration to the white wines. Exhibiting extravagant aromas of honeyed orchard fruits, confit peach and green mango mingled with hints of nutmeg, freshly baked bread and buttery pastry, it's full-bodied, satiny and broad shouldered, remaining vibrant and dynamic despite all its heft and weight, and revealing its chassis of chalky structuring extract as it opens in the glass. It concludes with a long, resonant finish. Aubert de Villaine had been barely able to contain his enthusiasm for the 2020 vintage when I saw him last year, and looking at the 2020s from bottle with Perrine Fenal at the domaine this year only confirmed why. This is a striking vintage for the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, which is both very stylistically distinctive—and in that sense, even a little atypical—but which also shows the estate's different terroirs very clearly. The 2020s aren't as sensual and red-fruited as the 2019s; they're deeper-pitched and spicier in profile and will demand more patience, even if both vintages are likely to prove similarly long-lived. The domaine's white wines are also especially successful this year. I've also included tasting notes on the nascent 2021s from barrel, but it's the in-bottle notes, tasted at the domaine in ideal conditions, that are as ever the most