‘Many people come to visit this site and we understand’. That’s what the sign says, but to explain where I am doesn’t immediately lend itself to such a belief. I’m among a vast sloping patchwork of vineyards. Vineyards as far as you can see. A narrow road leads up from a modest church protruding from a cluster of buildings that could only very generously be called a village. At an unremarkable T-junction, a centuries-old, lichen-flecked stone cross rises from a low boundary wall, the only thing resembling a landmark in this area. To its right, a single limestone brick is etched, in an austere serif font, along with the words ‘Romanée Conti’.

The light is fading and an eerie mist clings tightly to the top of the vines. It’s virtually silent, too, save for the faint buzz of the main road far behind us and the occasional peal of a church bell. And then it happens.

From nowhere, two Mercedes minivans with tinted windows tear round the corner and deposit a giddy gaggle of middle-aged tourists in cashmere quarter-zips and comfortable sneakers. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that they’ve been on the wine. There are selfies and chaotic group shots. A woman reclines on the wall. A man twerks half-heartedly in front of the cross. Someone is loudly FaceTimed. A by-now oblivious local jogs through the crowd without a glance. Then they all pile back in the vans and vanish into the night. It’s silent once more. Welcome to the world’s most revered vineyard. There is nothing to see here

To say that this bijou plot – a mere 1.8 hectares; roughly four-and-a-bit football pitches – has an outsized global reputation would be the grossest of understatements. It has been said that a sip of this wine is proof that God exists. In 2018, a bottle of Romanée-Conti 1945 sold for $558,000 at Sotheby’s in New York, the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold at auction. Each year, thousands of people head to this pin-drop in a field on their oenophilic pilgrimages – hence the need for the sign, which goes on to assert that under no condition must you enter the vineyard. In other parts of the world this would be guarded with weapons.

Burgundy sits in, and is sometimes referred to as, the heart of France. Its prized wine route running from Dijon through Beaune to Santenay is known as the ‘Route des Grands Crus’. Bordeaux, to the south- west, has star-power, scale, and size – those fairytale châteaux, the sweeping 100-hectare vineyards. Champagne, to the north, has wealth, prestige, and all the unmissable trappings to prove it. Here, winemaking is markedly smaller, rawer, older – rooted more in farming than in any kind of bourgeois 

. Domaine de la Romanée-Conti itself owns the eponymous grand cru vineyards and La Tâche outright, more than half of Romanée-St-Vivant, half of Richebourg, and various tranches of Grands Échezeaux, Échezeaux, Montrachet and Corton. It is a Burgundian exemplar, not an outlier.

The region’s tendency toward these smaller plots of land dates back to its Napoleonic laws of inheritance, as hot a topic then as it is now. Before my trip I’d called in to the oldest wine shop in the world, Berry Bros. & Rudd, in London’s St James’s. Here I picked the brains of Barbara Drew, Master of Wine and Burgundy devotee. She explained how instead of simply passing on to the first-born son, land had to be shared equally between all children.

“Even if they started big, [the estates] had to be sub-divided and sub-divided until you’ve got these tiny little plots. And the mindset was that the farmer does everything – he tends the vines, he makes the wine... It’s a kind of one-man-band approach that has been happening for thousands of years.	

“But even by Burgundy standards these [DRC] vineyards are pretty small” says Drew, heaving open a hefty edition of 

by Jasper Morris, the regional bible, to show me the scale maps. “You’re looking at 1,000 bottles, 3,000 bottles from some.”

Or as Lupo Thoenes, director of wine at Claridge’s, puts it, “Hermès can always make more Birkin bags. But only nature tells [DRC] how many bottles of Romanée-Conti there’s going to be”. Thoenes helped build one of London’s most extensive DRC lists at The Connaught, and he is now growing a collection that “reflects its iconic-ness” for a newly installed cellar.

So call it what you will. Supply and demand. Resource scarcity. Grail culture. But even in the 1500s, wine from this neck of the woods was selling for 10 times the price of other grand cru vineyards. 

, then, to the Romans who first planted and cultivated vines in these parts and who are generally credited with introducing viticulture to Burgundy. The locals, however, would like it to be noted that the all-essential barrels were a Gallic invention. And 

 to the monks, the priors of Saint-Vivant, who were ceded this land by the dukes of Burgundy in the 12th century and became rather blessed at winemaking, working out what particular vines grew well and where, eventually under the banner of Cloux de Saint-Vivant or Cru de Clos.	

The sturdy ruins of their abbey, Saint-Vivant de Vergy, sit at the top of the hill looking across the Romanée-Conti vineyards. They too are shrouded in mist, as it turns out everything is at this time of year. It all adds a certain 

to an early morning exploration, as does the wood-carved, cowled monk figurine sat spookily by its entrance.	

Ongoing restoration work (‘glacial’ if the peevish Google reviews are anything to go by) means various corners are fenced off so there’s no poking around its ancient cellars where a still near-full bottle of circa 1772 wine was uncovered – and tasted – in 2011. Would a site of such historic importance suffer such a protracted patch-up in Bordeaux or Champagne, I wonder? But, as a solitary stonemason noisily grinds away, I figure this might just be Burgundy doing things its own way: slowly and properly.

Back down on vine level, in the village of Chambolle-Musigny, it was the same order of monks who first erected the manor house and outbuildings that sat at the foot of Eglise Sainte Barbe. It had once served as the home and headquarters of a venerable wine merchant, but only recently opened its doors as Bellevigne Bourgogone – a freshly beautified boutique hotel with oenotourism at its heart (a case in point: its rooms are fitted with proper wine fridges instead of the standard mini variety).

My genial host Alizée whisks us around the castle lingering on various period details – stone staircases, oak beams, wood panelling – all dating back centuries. Its most desirable room is not the largest one, but the most unique: a standalone outhouse with a faded stone crest fittingly titled the ‘Romanée-Conti suite’.	

“This has always been the heart of the property,” says Alizée when we reach the cellar, which is still wonderfully preserved, save for a large wooden table for tastings and an artfully lit, temperature-controlled display unit for a collection of local greatest hits. There’s no time to uncork anything just yet, Alizée has swung a reservation at La Chambolle, the only restaurant open on this quiet Monday night. Snails, duck, potatoes and a village wine that duets perfectly with the cuisine.

The food, the wine, the peace; you sleep well around here. Should you overindulge, the next day’s hangover is brushed off as ‘Le bon fatigue’ (the good kind of tired). Still, the 6am chime of the church bells comes as a shock, as does the secondary chiming at 6.02am – an inbuilt Cistercian snooze function. A generous breakfast later and I’m out in the petite graveyard on the edge of town.

Before we jump ahead several centuries, a quick summary of the 1500s to 1900s. There are countless historical subplots and side stories involving syphilis, gout, incest, hubris and betrayal, but the salient facts are these. The Romanée-Conti vineyard passed from the church to a Flemish lord in 1631 who made the switch to ‘La Romanée’, supposedly as a nod to the Romans though no one is quite sure. In 1760 it was sold for what even then was an eye-watering sum to Louis François I de Bourbon, the playboy Prince of Conti, who demanded his own name be appended to the moniker and then greedily kept all the wine for himself.

After the early part of the French Revolution in 1793, what was now Romanée-Conti was counted as ecclesiastical property and seized. It was auctioned off and held by a number of prominent local families, until a final sale in 1869 took it into the hands of Jacques-Marie Duvault-Blochet who added the vineyards of Richebourg, Grands Échezeaux and Échezeaux to the domaine. His viticulture tome from the time, 

, was perspicacious enough to still be consulted today. Domaine de la Romanée-Conti passed down to his relatives in the Gaudin de Villaine family, whose name is etched into that iconic vineside cross and who still, with the Leroy family (also etched into the cross), oversee operations.	

There was some Nazi looting during the Second World War as the vineyard sat in occupied territory, but its 30-mile proximity from the demarcation line meant there was plenty of Burgundian resistance, much of it from increasingly wily winemakers trying to protect their livelihoods. It made that prized 1945 vintage all the more poignant.

Aubert de Villaine took the helm with Lalou Bize-Leroy in 1974, a Lennon and McCartney-esque alchemical duo who helped establish the domaine’s modern era. However, some extremely niche wine squabbles led to Mme Bize-Leroy leaving in 1992 and being replaced by her nephews. The professorial de Villaine, the ‘grand monsieur’, is as much social economist and philosopher as winemaker and is as close to a figurehead as DRC has had until he stepped back in 2022, well into his eighties. His nephew and Bize-Leroy’s niece steward things now. But back in 2010, de Villaine received a package, and that’s why I’m in a graveyard.

The package was in a cardboard tube containing a note and a detailed map of the Romanée-Conti vines. The note said: “You just received a map of a part of Romanée-Conti in which you can see a circle. The vines inside this ring have been drilled a few centimetres under the surface of the ground. You will know why in about 10 days. In just enough time for you to realise this is not a joke.” The next day, de Villaine found two poisoned vines and received a follow-up note a week later demanding €1m in ransom for the precise locations of multiple other ‘poisoned’ vines. The blackmailer had considered that de Villaine might simply uproot a few of the vines and accept a lower-yield year with the threat that this was effectively targeting the Romanée-Conti reputation at large.

There are twists and turns to this tale worthy of a Netflix documentary, but in lieu of that may I direct you to Maximillian Potter’s 

Here we’ll skip to de Villaine working, extremely quietly, with the Police Nationale to catch the culprit. While covert surveillance was failing to unearth any leads, a final note arrived with a day, a time, and a location for the deposit of the €1m: 12 February, 11pm, Cimetière de Chambolle-Musigny. On the police’s advice, the drop was to be made by a trusted employee, de Villaine’s loyal lieutenant Jean-Charles Cuvelier. Officers would be hidden in and around the graveyard, the money all fake and fitted with a GPS tracker. As the police waited, not knowing quite who would show and how, a nervy Cuvelier did his duty. It’s an unnerving place, even at 8am, and such high-stakes, spy-caper stuff is not what life among the vines prepares you for.	

It was only half an hour after Cuvelier had driven off for a calming glass of wine that the police, through their night-vision goggles, saw a solitary figure stroll down and pick up the bag. Jacques Soltys, 57, was arrested at gunpoint just 200 metres from the cemetery. Weedkiller and a handgun were found in his makeshift shack up in the woods where the resistance fighters once hid. “It was all my idea,” he told police, later hanging himself in his cell as he awaited trial.	

It’s an ugly tale, one that all the neighbouring domaine heads were keen to forget, fearful of both copycat actions and the spotlight in general. A 2015 Unesco designation for Romanée-Conti’s vineyards, after years of personal lobbying by de Villaine, was a welcome change of subject.		

I’d arranged to meet Tom Kevill-Davies, host, founder, cook, sommelier and countless other things at the bucolic Hungry Cyclist Lodge a few miles south in Auxey-Duresses (he also sings in the excellently named local band, the Auxey Morons). Kevill-Davies swapped south London for Burgundy 11 years ago and has a useful outsider/insider read on how the region functions. “Winemaking really is what binds the communities here. In my village of 300 or so, 30 or 40 at least are winemakers. And then you have the people who sell the wine, work in the restaurants where people drink the wine, the chiropractors who fix the dodgy backs of the farm workers...”

We shuttle around from point to point on the grand cru vineyard dirt tracks in his van and end up, as if to prove the point, striking up conversation with someone tending a small parcel of Échezeaux soil. They ask to remain anonymous which, given the plot-by-plot rivalry, seems fair. “A lot of our innovations are actually from looking backwards. Horses for example are being used more and more,” they tell us. On cue, two plough horses cross in front of us. “Or there’s very simple artisanal things. When we harvest, the rule is: if you don’t want to put the grape in your mouth, don’t put it in the bucket.”

Lupo Thoenes at Claridge’s had explained to us that “there is a very big contrast between what DRC does and how they want to be perceived, and then how the market and the rest of the world perceives it”. Out here, having a refreshingly prosaic chat with feet firmly in the soil and the scent of discarded vines burning in the air, it does seem particularly divorced from the other side of the oh-so-valuable coin.

On which Nick Pegna, global head of wine and spirits at Sotheby’s, says interest in DRC has definitely increased since the late 1990s with an upswing in recent years, which some have attributed to the time and longing afforded by lockdowns. “As the fine wine market has become even more global, the demand for DRC has continued and it’s still considered the best burgundy in the world. In 2023 Burgundy was our single biggest region, accounting for 34 per cent of our wine auction sales. Of this, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti accounted for a remarkable 25 per cent, and our most valuable lot of the year: five magnums of Romanée Conti 1999 sold in New York for $275,000.”

After a lunch of oysters and wine, Kevill-Davies drops me back at Château du Clos de Vougeot, the one landmark building among the grand cru vineyards. Its own walled vineyard was yet another Cistercian monk achievement; they added the château in 1551 which now serves as a museum, events space and, as the overenthusiastic film shown in- side explains, headquarters for the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin.	

It was set up in1934 as a sort of big-hearted Bullingdon Club, and a noble fraternity that tasked itself with revitalising the Burgundy wine trade. Ironically, given today’s Sotheby’s sums and the international coaches now parked outside, it had never been a region that marketed itself particularly well, if at all. Bordeaux is on the coast, which meant its wines could be sent wher- ever. Burgundy is not. It’s not even near a big river, so the wines didn’t necessarily travel very far. Throw the triple threat of American prohibition, the Russian revolu- tion, and First World War into the mix, and it had a hard task on its hands. So the group pre-empted every 2024 PR plan by throwing lavish, sponsored Burgundian dinners with guests great and good to spread the word which, coupled with the advent of the auto- mobile and a certain Michelin guide, started to pique interest at home and abroad.

Back at Bellevigne that evening, snacking on 

and fresh bread, I refresh my emails in vain. This should be the part where I sit down with a bottle of Romanée-Conti and finally tell you, dear reader, in florid detail what the world’s most expensive wine tastes like and how I can taste the soul of Burgundy itself. But things don’t work like that here. I’d sent a few enquiries, pulled the odd string, put out a feeler or three across the past weeks but nothing was doing. Appointments are rarely granted, and can take months to arrange even if they are secured. This is not secrecy as strategy; it’s just how things are done. Quiet, dedicated people making extraordinary things that speak wholly for themselves.

So I pass the microphone, so to speak, to those who have. Like Dan Keeling, editor of 

Who’s Afraid of Romanée-Conti: A shortcut to drinking great wines 

is, conveniently, out this month. “I’m certain most people are more interested in hearing about how a wine might make them feel than what it tastes like,” wrote Keeling. “And the way these Romanée-Contis fuse Bourguignon grunt with celestial finesse is like nothing I’ve ever experienced.”	

Or Roald Dahl, who exclaimed “Breathe this bouquet! Taste it! Drink it! But never try to describe it! Impossible to give an account of such a delicacy with words!” Or Aubert de Villaine himself, who once simply claimed that to drink his wine was to “touch the eternal”. Or maybe the clue is in the fact that if ever you are invited to that mythic cellar, you will need to find Rue du le Temps Perdu, the street of lost time. Whatever it is, many people come to visit this site. And now I understand why.

This article appears in the winter 2024 issue of Gentleman's Journal. Read all about the issue 

The best Japanese restaurants in London

Why Cristal Rosé is a true unicorn Champagne

Where to celebrate Burns Night in London