Romanée-Conti

You probably haven't heard of Château Lafite, Château Mouton, Château Haut-Brion, unless...

Like, even Domaine de la Romanee-Conti, unless you are at least marginally into wine.

Yeah, yeah.

And so when someone is at, like, a really expensive restaurant, they basically look for, this is our working theory-

... it's a good producer.

Um, you know, it's not a Romanee-Conti, but you know, there we go.

[laughs]

Um.

No, maybe a French red back then.

Um, yeah.

You don't remember kicking back on the sofa and going, "Cool, let's open that Domaine Romanee-Conti I've been holding on to"?

Well, no, unfortunately all that dried up.

Mm.

You know, if you think of some of the most expensive wines in the world, like Domaine de la Romanee-Conti in France.

They're biodynamic.

Mm.

That came later, and people were educating themselves so quickly.

In fact, I remember going with a, uh, the master of wine colleague of mine to Shanghai in the late '90s, and we did a Burgundy tasting, and the questions that came from the audience were, "Well, uh, what is this if it isn't Romanee-Conti, and can you explain it?" And so we weren't drinking Romanee-Conti, we were drinking something else, so we explained.

And we went back a few months later, and there was a question from the same audience about malolactic fermentation.

So in that time, people had gone away, educated themselves, and they were so well informed.

Mm.

Burgundy, I think we know about, and Burgundy is, is the, the high point, the apogee in terms of price and, and access and complication.

But I think that's, that's defined by Romanee-Conti, Leroy, and Dovin and others that at the very, very top end.

I think there's an interest with new collectors or new lovers of wine to just understand how Burgundy works.

Let's drink the...

Let's figure out if I can afford the Romanee-Contis, the Petrus, the Screaming Eagles, all these, uh, gems of the wine world.

I hope I can afford it before I get too old and I can't drink too much.

So, you know, you have, uh, this range of people, so definitely by age demographic.

They only want to tell, but I get allocation of that.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I, I'm bored of drinking, uh, I'm bored of drinking Romanee-Contis and things like that.

Give me something that I, I, I don't know.

I mean, it was...

it had everything from, you know, back vintages of Petrus and Romanée-Conti to, like, the funky skin contact George wine that, you know, no one was really listing at the time.

So I think because o- o- of Laura's just innate curiosity and, and, and eccentric lists, listings, we had Nyetimber '96, um, by the glass, and this was back in 2009, 2008 sometime.

By the glass?