Tasted in Chambolle-Musigny with Frédéric Mugnier, 14 November, 2017.
Domaine Jacques Frederic Mugnier
Rue de Vergy
21220 Chambolle-Musigny
Tel: +33 3 80 62 85 39
www.mugnier.fr
Frédéric on 2017:
“2017 was, I’d say, ideal. There was the possibility of frost but we avoided it. The grapes were clean, with no maladies – really perfect grapes from plenty of sun, and rain that was regular right until the end. We did have some periods of heat but they were never too long. I’d call it a normal volume harvest but it’s the first ‘normal’ since 2009!”
Frédéric on 2016:
“You know, you have good years and less good years – the quality is certainly there even if the volume isn’t – but in Volnay, Savigny and Beaune it’s the same. Chambolle really had some frost damage – some parcels lost 90% – but overall it’s a half harvest for us – we lost 40% in the Clos de Marechale. 25 barrels of villages would be normal but I had only 6. Our Bonnes-Mares was the only parcel not touched.
“The Marechale is my great satisfaction, not just because it tastes good, but because I’ve actually enough to sell! How do I distribute Amoureuses for example? It gives me no satisfaction to keep diving allocations between agents, some with just 1 bottle. For thirty years the quantity of burgundy has been limited.”
I’ve tasted with Frédéric a few times, but this was the first time I saw the old cellar – there’s really some space here! “You need the space to work well, and if you can work well, it’s possible to make good wine.”
The wines…
First class from Frédéric this vintage – I’m stunned by how much better not just the Bonnes-Mares is but also the Ameureuses – and that was never a modest wine! Bravo!
2016 Chambolle-Musigny
Theres not much of this, but what a perfume it has! Fresh with a suggestion lf salinity. Really a nice structure here – freshness and purity combined, still with a certain richness.
2016 Chambolle-Musigny 1er Les Fuées
More volume of aroma, despite that, it’s the width of perfume that’s the most overt characteristic. A tiny touch of gas then width of flavour followed by more ingraining flavour – deep layers of flavour. This would compare favourably to grand cru wines. Fresh but with a proper structure – like a Bonnes-Mores in terms of the structure and concentration combined.
Vibrant, mineral, transparent – that is a nose! Deep really concentrated but with energy and intensity, really a mineral energy in the finish – in the manner of de Vogüé – this wine has really come on in the last decade! This great wine that will live longer than me!
Ooh – simply wow! Volume, flowers, minerality and not just that, purity of aroma, red fruits and complexity – that’s just the nose – I’d be happy only to smell this. Wide, again transparent, complex, more than I ever remember, but still with a little rigour, and haunting length. Like the Bonnes-Mares this wine has also got better and better – I love my 99s, but they are simple compared to today…
One of the domaine’s parcels has been pulled out for replanting – it wasn’t co-ordinated, but Drouhin did the same with two of their parcels – and on the same day last year! The last vintage of this released by Frédéric was the 2012, preferring to have a little age on the bottles.
A nose of less width but more depth and almost equal complexity to les Amoureuses. Lots of volume here, depth of flavour complexity. Where this has another level, and it does, is in the finishing width – this is simply a fabulous thing.
Ooh – even after Musigny that’s still a big bouquet of aroma – beautiful. Clearly a more visible structural style, but fine concentration and with layers of finishing flavour. Really a width of flavour here. It’s not facile, this will need as much time as the Fuées for example. Less delicaciy in the middle but not at the start – super wine – it lacks the mid-palate tenderness of the Chambolle wines, but is a great Nuits.
2016 Nuits St.Georges 1er Clos de la Marechale Blanc
The roots are 30 years-old, but the grafting to chardonnay was done in 2004.
Here is a beautiful vibration of ripe but fresh fruit – super-inviting. A little gas today, but the flavour is layered and keeps giving, giving, giving. This is very tasty wine with a little rigour to the finishing structure but that’s as much its stage in elevage as the place it comes from. But there’s tenacious finishing flavour. I akways think CdN whites a little more rigid than their CdB siblings but they are for saving: “You can make interesting things here because you can wait to harvest but the grapes still keep their acidity.“