2023 Nicole Lamarche La Grande Rue Grand Cru Monopole

The great monopole of the domaine, and one of very few Grand Cru monopoles in Burgundy. La Grande Rue is a narrow 1.65-hectare strip running straight down the fall line of the Vosne slope, bordered by La Tache and Les Gaudichots to the south and facing La Romanee-Conti, La Romanee and Romanee-Saint-Vivant across a narrow track to the north. Records go back to 1450; the Lamarche family bought it at auction in 1933 and it has been a monopole ever since, elevated from Premier Cru to Grand Cru in 1992. Christy Canterbury MW gave the 2023 97 points.

The amount of perfume Nicole can coax out of her so-very-pale wines is always amazing. Here the bouquet brings up baked raspberries, mint, verbena and tobacco leaf. The palate feels like satin hemmed in by lacy tannins and a crystal bell twinkle of gentle acidity. Distinguished, tantalizing and harmonious, the underlying power will gently unleash for well beyond a decade. - Christy Canterbury MW, TimAtkin.com (97 pts)

Around 8,000 bottles are made in an average year, from horse-ploughed vines on thin brown limestone and rendzina. Fully destemmed in 2023, wild yeast, roughly twenty days on skins, then sixteen to twenty months in barrel. Clive Coates MW on the vineyard: a more feminine wine than La Tache, closer to Romanee-Saint-Vivant.