For reports and full tasting notes, go toTim Atkin MW's website.

Predictably, the 2021 La Tâche Grand Cru threatens to nonchalantly walk away with wine of a (difficult) vintage with a showstopping display from barrel. There are some years when La Tâche does not mess about. Not playing the audience, no toying, just a direct, penetrating, kaleidoscopic bouquet that verges on ineffable to describe. Amazing transparency and delineation, if the aromatics were music, it would be a harp soloist plucking strings in an empty cavernous hall. Ebullient red fruit, a hint of wild and dampish moorland emerges with time. The palate is medium-bodied with finely chiselled tannins, heavenly balanced with tremendous length as it fans out without a care in the world. Breathtaking.

The disparity between my score in barrel last year and from bottle this year is an illustration of the vagaries of barrel tasting, as the 2021 La Tâche Grand Cru has benefited immeasurably from a second winter of élevage. If the Saint-Vivant is the cousin of the Romanée-Conti, La Tâche this year is the big brother of the Richebourg, unwinding in the glass with aromas of dark berries and plums mingled with Asian spices, rose petals and coniferous forest and framed by a discreet patina of new oak. Full-bodied, layered and muscular, with a broad, textural attack and an ample core of fruit that conceals a serious chassis of tannin, it's long, resonant and intensely perfumed.

Co-director Perrine Fenal believes this wine stands out because of its sense of serenity and accomplishment, compared with Corton, where you sense the wine has suffered, even though both vineyards suffered from the frost. Harvested 24, 25, 27 September. 50-year-old vines, yield 8.8 hl/ha. Total production 579 cases. Bottled 12 April 2023. M id ruby. Complex fruit aroma of both red and black fruits. Vibrant, open, with a joyful spring in its step. Firm, darker fruited and more savoury on the palate, not as joyous as the aroma but still with a deep energy and harmony. Deliciously dry on the finish with a slight woody note – more stems than oak – increasing the freshness, though there is none of the leafiness of the Richebourg here. Finest, polished tannins that are so discreet I almost forgot to mention them. Extreme purity and transparency. (JH)