Domain Lamarche’s claim to fame of course comes from the Monopole vineyard “La Grand Rue“ which lies between Romanee Conti, La Tache and La Romanee, primest of prime real estate. However, the price of La Grand Rue has always been not just a little, but orders of magnitude lower than those famous wines (in EUR as of 2018, Romanee Conti 12k, La Tache 3k, La Romanee 3k, vs. La Grande Rue “only” 500€). Why? Well, the quality was also multiple times lower than wines of its neighbors. Now with the new generation, daughter Nicole, taking over I thought it was a good time to check-in on the wines during tastings organized by local merchants in Asia, showing recent vintages 2014-16. Last time I had a serious look at these wines was ca. 15 years ago, so, time to brush up I guess. The wines below were tasted during a masterclass and a walkabout tasting on the following day.
Tasting Notes
2014 Domaine Francois Lamarche Vosne-Romanée Village, 88 Points
Discrete nose, some dark fruit, light palate, enough structure though, short finish. Did not strike me as anything particularly noteworthy.
2014 Domaine Francois Lamarche Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Chaumes, 89 Points
Discrete, clean nose of red fruit, some discrete leafy notes, touch austere finish. A bit harmless for a VSR 1er Cru.
2015 Domaine Francois Lamarche Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Chaumes, 92 Points
A clear step up from the 2014, deeper and darker, there is also more stuffing. Solid.
2014 Domaine Francois Lamarche Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru Les Suchots, 93 Points
Clean red fruit in the nose some spices. Fine palate, elegant mouth feel. Lovely wine but is it as good as l’Arlot?
2016 Domaine Francois Lamarche Clos Vougeot, 91 Points
Dark fruit, closed. A bit light to my surprise, aromatically rather foursquare, a bit of a let down for a GC in the great 2016 vintage.
2015 Domaine Francois Lamarche Echezeaux, 95 Points
Ok, now we are talking! The first nose that shows real sophistication, red and black fruit, forest, earth. Good stuff, also elegant, clean palate, lively acidity. A winner. Lamarche has a three different plots, all high quality ones in Ech (Champs Traversins, Les Couts, Clos St.Denis) and it shows in this blend. A very complete wine. 95-96
2015 Domaine Francois Lamarche La Grande Rue, 95 Points
Nose of more dark than red fruit, some licorice as well, gingerbread. Elegant palate with good mid mouth presence. There is really not much of a difference in complexity than the Ech side by side. Solid for sure but I am missing the Wow-Factor here for a vineyard juxtaposed to RC, LT LR and also the 2x price to the Ech. Will bottle age will get it there?
2016 Domaine Francois Lamarche La Grande Rue, 94 Points
Good density, lovely fruit. Discrete nose with not much expression. Not as sophisticated as the other top 2016s in this walk about tasting and, like in the GR 2015, missing the Oomph for this great location. Will it come with age?
Closing Remarks
I recall when I tasted Lamarche the last time across vineyards in 2005 (vintages 01/02/03), I was a little underwhelmed by the Grand Rue but impressed with the Echezeaux. Unfortunately, this is still the case today despite recent efforts, the gap to La Tache, RC, LR remains. To make matters worse, Lamarche made a rather strange decision to carve out a so called prestige cuvée from of the already small Grand Rue vineyard, “La Grand Rue Cuvee 1959”. Why would you do that? For example, if you want Romanee Conti to be the best wine of the world, the last thing you would do is to produce a Romanee Conti Cuvee XY on top of it because by doing so you devalue your entire RC plot to second best…
Author: Christian Raubach, WSET III, FWS, WSG Champagne Master
January 2018