2005 Alain Hudelot-Noellat, Romanee-Saint-Vivant Grand Cru, Bottle (750ml)

John Gilman | 96 Points

"The RSV was also raised in fifty percent new oak this year, and the resulting wine is resplendent in its minerally terroir. The bouquet is deep, complex and perfumed as it wafts from the glass in a sophisticated mélange of red and black raspberries, plums, bitter chocolate, brilliant minerality, woodsmoke, spices and a delicate base of vanillin oak. On the palate the wine is full-bodied, deep and racy, with great focus and intensity of flavor, a rock solid core of fruit, snappy acids, fine-grained tannins and stunning purity on the very long, peacock’s tail of a finish. Stupendous juice!"

Burghound | 95 Points

"A very densely fruited nose is composed mostly from the black side of the fruit spectrum along with notes of menthol, spice and Asian tea nuances. There is excellent concentration to the intense and attractively well-detailed middle weight flavors that possess a suave and highly seductive mouth feel before terminating in a mouth coating, complex and hugely long finish. This is an unusually powerful RSV that is less elegant than usual yet one that is still very much on the way up, indeed I would suggest allowing it at least another 5 to 7 years of celar time as it's very much still a baby."

The 2005 Domaine Alain Hudelot-Noëllat Romanée-Saint-Vivant is a wine that demanded patience and finally starting to open up into something extraordinary

Founded in 1962, Hudelot-Noëllat farms 100-year-old vines across their 0.48-hectare RSV parcel — next door to DRC and Leroy, sharing their slope, their soil, and in the finest vintages, their ambition.

Burghound has called this "a domaine on the rise that could potentially hit superstar status — it certainly has the vineyards to enable it." The 2005 is the clearest evidence of that potential.

The vintage needs no introduction. Widely considered one of the greatest modern years for Burgundy, producing wines of deep concentration and fine, energising acidity that tread the line between richly powerful and elegantly refreshing.

Two decades on, it is just arriving. And with 100-year-old vines and one of Burgundy's greatest vineyards behind it, it has plenty of road still ahead.