1961 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Grands-Echezeaux

Community Tasting Notes (5) Median Score: 90 points

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  10/7/2022 - VindeGardeConsulting Likes this wine: 90 Points

  From a low fill bottle. Quite surprising color but ultimately never achieved a level of greatness I wanted.

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  10/17/2021 - Cailles wrote: 91 Points

  30x 1955 & 1961 (mostly Bdx): Tasted single blind. Taste-off between the 1955 (rated 94 pts) and the 1961 (rated 91 pts). The 1955 jumped out of the glass with a tantalizing firework of aromas but didn’t show the same verve and not that clean on the palate. The 1961 almost look liked a port wine and showed quite oxidative and almost dead. But with a lot of swirling and air both wines resurrected and got better with every minute in the glass and my score kept climbing higher. In the end both were very good wines but without exceptionalism. The only question left is, what would have been possible if we would have time to follow the wine over more than just 20 minutes.
  
  TN: At first pitch black, oxidized and only a bit of dried fruit peaking trough. With a lot of swirling it came back with nice meaty notes and dark red fruit on the nose and an ever changing profile on the palate with dried red, dark red, some fresh blue fruit, meaty notes and old leather on the palate. In the end no more oxidation notes. In this short period of time it made an impressive turn but never really became a perfectly clean and complex wine. Melted tannins, enough tension and freshness but rather on the masculine side of what Burgundy can be.
  
  Decanting: Not decanted but this bottle would have needed at a solid hour.

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  9/20/2021 - sirpat00 wrote: 70 Points

  Grand 1961 vs 1955 vintage tasting (Fribourg): Big 1961 vs 1955 tastings including 10 direct match-ups and 11 individual wines from 1961. The tasting was conducted in flights of 4, single-blind and with no previous decant with all bottles opened 1h prior to start. The line-up was dominated by Bordeaux reds, but also included 5 Sauternes, 1 Champagne, 3 Burgundy reds and 1 Ribera del Duero. The following observations are worth mentioning: i) 1961 generally came across as a better vintage today than 1955, ii) the performance correlated with the 1855 classification, iii) The most outstanding wines were outside of the Bordeaux reds with Veuve Clicquot Rosé '61, Vega Sicilia Unico '61 (both 97) and La Tour Blanche '61 (96) worth mentioning, iv) Top-performing Bordeaux was Margaux (95) in 1961 and Mouton in 1955. List of wines included in the tasting story.
  
  Tasting note:
  Oxidized at first sight and felt dead. There was some black coffee, some leather, but no discernible fruit and the palate not much more than old vinegar. To be fair some in the group of 15 claimed time in the glass and vigorous swirling brought this back to live. So I kept swirling and swirling, trying to defibrillate this out of the graveyard… but to no avail. The 1955 next to it performed better but was also not much more than ok.

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  7/24/2018 - lepetitchateau wrote: 94 Points

  Burly and showing class elements of the 1961 vintage - hugely ripe and weighty, dense, a big wine. Nose is a spice box! and is better than the palate. A powerful wine more than elegant.

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  3/7/2016 - Vini Ciclismo Likes this wine: 89 Points

  DRC Tasting with Grand Millesime (Circa Melbourne): violets on the nose.
  surprisingly youthful but not very expressive or interesting.
  quite fresh.

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