The king of the cellar is unsurprisingly the 2019 Corton Clos du Roi Grand Cru, a beautiful wine in the making that exhibits scents of wild berries, peonies, cinnamon, exotic spices and sweet soil tones. Full-bodied, deep and lively, it's the most mineral and dynamic of the domaine's grands crus this year, concluding with a long, chalky finish.

The 2018 Corton Clos du Roi Grand Cru is showing beautifully, offering up aromas of wild berries, orange rind, oriental spices, peonies and sweet soil tones. Full-bodied, layered and perfumed, it's velvety and mineral, with a multidimensional core, fine tannins and a long, lively finish.

Aromas of rose hip and rose petals, blood orange, sweet dark fruits and raw cocoa introduce the 2017 Corton Clos du Roi Grand Cru, a full-bodied, satiny wine that's beautifully fragrant and complete, with elegantly fine-grained structuring tannins and a pure, mineral-driven finish. As usual, it's higher-toned and less gourmand than the fleshy Bressandes, but it's the deeper and more serious wine, if only marginally.

The 2016 Corton Clos du Roi Grand Cru is immensely impressive, unfurling in the glass with aromas of wild blueberries, raspberries and cassis that mingle with notions of dark chocolate, musk, violets and ineffable savory bass notes. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, satiny and multidimensional, with superb concentration, tangy acids and a long, searingly mineral finish. It's one of the two or three finest expressions of the hill of Corton to be found—with the domaine's fleshier, more gourmand Corton Bressandes not far behind. As readers may know, the de Nicolays’ holdings in the Clos du Roi are located at the top of this large vineyard, where the soils are redder and sandier than those classified—in white—as Corton-Charlemagne but which feature the same type of marl.