Wine Advisor
Jacques Frederic Mugnier, Musigny Grand Cru 2015
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Description
Tasting notes
Reviewed by: Neal Martin
The 2015 Musigny Grand Cru offers compelling estuarine and oyster shell scents on a complex, extremely well focused nose. The palate is medium-bodied with fine, supple tannin, pure blackberry and raspberry fruit, and enthralling mineralité that seems to blossom toward the aristocratic finish. This is a fabulous wine, a Musigny flirting with perfection – and a serious contender for wine of the vintage. Tasted blind at the annual Burgfest tasting.
Reviewed by: Stephen Tanzer
Bright red-ruby. Spectacular nose combines boysenberry, blackberry, licorice and spice lifted by an alluring lavender high note. Wonderfully smooth but a bit youthfully tight, showing outstanding inner-mouth tension and a light touch to its vibrant flavors of dark fruits, minerals and spices. The slowly mounting finish features utterly suave, horizontal tannins and a whiplash of saline minerality. Really sparkles with life on the tongue.
Reviewed by: Stephen Tanzer
Brilliant red-ruby. Slightly reduced aromas of maraschino cherry, black raspberry, cocoa powder and pungent spices. Even thicker on the palate than the Amoureuses but less expressive and aromatic today, conveying an impression of medicinal reserve to the very ripe, subtly sweet flavors of dark raspberry and minerals. Finishing with more obvious tannins than the Amoureuses, this rather powerful young Musigny will need extended aging. Incidentally, none of these 2015s had yet been racked at the time of my November visit, which is a bit unusual here.
About the Producer
Domaine Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier is a Burgundian wine producer based in Chambolle-Musigny. It is particularly well-known for its Musigny Grand Cru wine which is regarded as a benchmark for that vineyard. While the estate is most closely associated with Pinot Noir wines from Chambolle-Musigny, it has 10 hectares (25 acres) of vineyards in Nuits-Saint-Georges as well. The Château de Chambolle-Musigny has been owned by the Mugnier family since 1863. From 1950, as there was no winemaker in the family, the vineyards were contracted out to Faiveley and Bruno Clair, with the latter selling the wine in bulk. Between 1985 and 2004, Frédéric Mugnier was able to take back the vineyards as leases expired. On top of the Musigny Grand Cru, Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier makes a wine from the Bonnes-Mares Grand Cru vineyard, as well as two premier cru wines, Les Fuées and Les Amoureuses, and a village-level wine. From the Nuits-Saint-Georges holdings, Mugnier makes a Clos des Fourches premier cru wine, and a red and a white premier cru from the Clos de la Maréchale vineyard, which is a monopole of the domaine. Vineyards are farmed without herbicides or pesticides and just two mildew treatments per year. Grapes are de-stemmed and whole berries are fermented in old open wooden vats. After around 16 months in oak, wines are bottled without fining and filtration.
