Geography
Vosne-Romanée sits in the heart of the Côte de Nuits, between Flagey-Échezeaux to the north (whose Grand Cru vineyards Échezeaux and Grands-Échezeaux are sold under the Vosne-Romanée banner) and Nuits-Saint-Georges to the south. The village is small but contains some of the most pedigreed vineyard land in wine. The bedrock is Bajocian limestone topped with shallow gravelly-clay soils, with east-southeast exposure that captures morning sun directly.
Classification
Six Grand Crus: Romanée-Conti (the monopole of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, the most expensive wine in the world), La Tâche (also DRC), Richebourg, Romanée-Saint-Vivant, La Grande Rue (a Domaine François Lamarche monopole), La Romanée (a Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair monopole). Plus the Flagey-Échezeaux Grand Crus that sell as Vosne-Romanée: Grands-Échezeaux and Échezeaux. The village also has 15 Premier Crus, the most respected being Cros Parantoux (made famous by Henri Jayer), Aux Brûlées, Aux Reignots, Les Suchots, Les Beaux-Monts.
Style of the wines
Vosne-Romanée is the most aromatic and complex of the Côte de Nuits villages. The classic profile: dark red and black cherry, rose petal, exotic spice, leather, sometimes a smoky-tar note in the top examples. The texture is silken; the tannin is fine-grained but persistent; the acid is bright; alcohol typically 13-13.5%. The wines have a particular kind of aromatic lift and complexity that connoisseurs spend decades trying to recognize blind.
How they age
DRC La Tâche and Romanée-Conti age fifty-plus years routinely. Even village-level Vosne-Romanée from a serious producer ages twenty years. The legendary Henri Jayer Cros Parantoux from the 1980s and 1990s, bottles of which now sell for tens of thousands of dollars at auction, drinks beautifully today and continues to evolve.
Producers we know
Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (the legendary reference), Domaine Méo-Camuzet, Domaine Henri Gouges (Nuits-Saint-Georges, but with neighboring Vosne holdings), Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair, Domaine François Lamarche, Domaine Anne Gros, Domaine Bruno Clavelier. The Henri Jayer legacy lives on through his nephew Emmanuel Rouget.