A wine made from the produce of young vines in Ruchottes-Chambertin. The domaine replanted half of their 0.64 hectare Ruchottes-Chambertin parcel in 2000, the original vines had been planted in 1950 but were not very productive. So this ‘Gevrey-Chambertin’ was the first cuvée of the new vines – from the ‘traditional’ third flowering.

In the first few vintages the wine was declassified to a ‘villages’ label. It’s the best part of 5 years since I last opened one of these and only a couple remain in the cellar – and that’s clearly such a shame! The 2002 and 2005 of this were such great buys despite the high price of entry for what seems ‘just’ a villages wine – unlike the wines in 2003 and 2004, both of which disappointed for the price – it seems that those young vines were more easily compromised by the difficult growing seasons. This bottle once-more emphasises that the half-dozen that I bought from the 2002 vintage simply weren’t enough!

The label for the product of these young vines transitioned from a villages to premier cru in the 2007 vintage, but there was still a Ruchottes-Chambertin produced during these years, only the fruit of the section replanted in 2000 was made into a separate cuvée. From the very low yielding 2012 vintage the young vines were blended with the old – and they have stayed that way ever since.

2002 Dr. Georges Mugneret, Gevrey-Chambertin
Medium, medium-plus colour. As pinot goes, here is a wine of barely middleweight aroma and flavour – but what aroma and flavour! The nose has a depth of floral perfume that easily out-points the fruit. In the mouth it’s silken and again so floral, just a hint of finishing oak flavour but it’s such a sweetly delicious wine that there’s hardly a sin that I would not be willing to forgive. Simply outstanding. A performance like this suggests that this wine has entered an early phase of absolute drinkability! Fragrant, beautiful wine…
Rebuy – Yes

Given how fabulously this showed, I was almost tempted to pull out the domaine’s 2001 Clos de Vougeot – but for (just) long enough, I thought better of it!