December 1, 2018 - Really strong showing. Classic Vosne spices and Richebourg character. Quite pretty at this stage. Has a nice sweetness. Lots of nuance with red and dark berries, spices and good fruit. Complex and integrated. Really fantastic.
October 15, 2016 - A very nice bottle, with the understated side typical of 83's. I really liked it, as did the table.
March 14, 2016 - It was sweet and cool with an underlying base of cherry stone. There were some compost and rose petal notes and it had good flesh and excellent cut to the finish.
January 3, 2015 - From an excellent looking bottle, this wine very deep red center and orange rims. The high- intensity nose was ethereal, showing violets, black cherries, oranges, and soil.
In the mouth, this wine was attractive right out of the gate and then became withdrawn. It slowly opened again over the course of several hours. The wine was medium bodied with notable rounded tannin, solid acidity, and excellent length. The nose was quite floral but the mouth was serious and more mineral oriented.
The nose on this wine was in the 96-97 point range and the mouth was in the 94-95 point range. I don't see upside for this wine so it is time to find a reason to pop the cork.
June 28, 2014 - From a nice looking bottle with a 3 cm fill, this wine had a red center and tawny rims. The high- intensity nose took a couple hours to open up. Afterwards it showed rhubarb, roses, brown spices, and sous bois.
In the mouth, this wine was light and refined with attractive rounded tannin. It had gorgeous balance and great length.
This is a first class wine that appears to be at its peak. Enjoy over the next 5+ years.
January 9, 2014 - Purchased from a reliable store ~2 years prior, they had it from release. Compared to the 1990 of the same wine, this was grittier & dirtier, showed a bit of the rot you expect to find in a 1983 but not terrible and only at the downside of the time it was open. Graceful spice and intensity but not a brute as some Richebourg certainly can be. With more time in the glass it fell apart and developed the old wine lacquer notes that are not so great.
September 25, 2012 - One of the better wines of the evening imo. Who says that '83's are over the hill….Wrong!! Better than the RSV and much more substance to it. Sous bois, earth on the nose. Rich with excellent structure. Super wine! 97 pts.
May 20, 2012 - Tasted blind, this wine had a red center with tawny rims. The medium+ intensity nose showed black cherry, rhubarb, soil, and brown spices.
Fortunately, there was no sign of the problems that often plague the '83 vintage. The mouth was rich with great rounded tannin. It also had excellent, refined length length which developed into the classic "peacock tail".
This impressive wine appears to be in its drinking window and should remain there for many years.
July 14, 2011 - Wednesday Night Burgundies (Bar Boulud): Last time I had this it was a Bern's bottle in absolutely perfect shape. This one came from parts unknown and perhaps illustrates the difference between storage that's perfect and storage that's merely passable, since I don't think the four years in between them alone can account for the difference. For one thing, the Bern's bottle was still deeply colored but this one was clearing out with a frail orange tint to it, possibly the result of the absolute crapload of sediment that had precipitated out of it. Fortunately, the wine performed much better than the visual cues alone indicated, with really intense five-spice aromatics that are a totally classic representation of the terroir -- in fact probably the first wine of the lineup to have aged to the point with such pure dirt-driven aromatics minus any influence of stems, barrels, or other primary and secondary things. On the palate this was fairly gentle without the flexing Richebourg muscle my last bottle showed. But fortunately it didn't have any hints of oxidation or other signs of being over-the-hill. I'm not sure how much longer it could have held itself together, but today it was still in decent shape and still showing some character and not generic old wininess.
November 17, 2007 - Raw power. Assertive in its expression and dense with material, almost feels more like the Leroy house style but the terroir signature is so pure with its cinnamon/clove/yadda yadda -- it would take all of a half a second to plant this in Vosne-Romanee, it just reeks of the stuff. Aside from that, the most notable thing about this Richebourg is the sheer horsepower of it. You can feel the engine rumbling under the hood.