Colour: Clear scarlet-red. Aroma: The fruit register is different from Échézeaux or Grands Échézeaux: chic blackcurrant and cherry replace the raspberry and plum. This is pure, refined and high-collared, with a dusting of sugar, and a little pounded cinnamon in the distance. What is does share with the Échézeaux and the Grands Échézeaux is a sense of unflustered harmony common to the DRC family in 2005; other growers’ renditions of the vintage had led me to expect more aromatic boldness and a firmer strike.

Flavour: Deep, plunging, brimming, with the acidity playing a more prominent part in the construction than for the Échézeaux or Grands Échézeaux. Again, the fruits are midnight black: this is the most Syrah-like of Burgundy’s royal Pinots. There’s a ripe, creamy sweetness behind the shaking mane of fruit. The flavours ripple, swirl and eddy. On the finish, more tannin than I remember in previous vintages of Romanée-St Vivant, and it leaves greater warmth in its wake, too.