2005 Chambolle Musigny Les Fuees

Bright red-ruby. Sexy red berries, minerals and flowers on the perfumed nose. Silky, sweet and very ripe; quite full and lush for this wine, with perfectly integrated acidity. This really saturates the mouth with intense red fruit, mineral and floral flavors. Finishes very long, with wonderfully suave tannins. Very sexy now, but this has to shut down, doesn't it?

Intense, very pure nose that manages to smell like particularly opulent damson juice. Dances on the palate – very pure and refined. Long, bealthy and expressive. This wine seems to lodge deep in the throat – a laryngitis cure? (JR)

From a site just south of Bonnes Mares, the 2005 Chambolle-Musigny Les Fuees smells brightly of ripe strawberry and black and red raspberry mingled with resin and maple syrup. In the mouth, this exhibits palpable density, yet lovely delicacy and refined tannin, with accents of citrus rind and mineral salts adding allure. The vigorous finish weaves together savory, soy-like saltiness, fresh, subtle tartness of ripe fruit skin, sweet florality. This should drink well early but be capable of at least 10-12 years of improvement. (The wine from Frederic’s first vintage – 1985 – is still lovely, in fact. And the 2004 Fuees is a true star as well as one of the rare ageworthy wines of that vintage.) Frederic Mugnier works from a just-expanded and superbly appointed cellar, and a tasting of his 2004s confirms that he is scoring hits even when Nature does not make it easy as she did the following year. Mugnier advocates unusually late but limited pigeage. “After all,” he opines, “we take great care not to crush the berries, so it doesn’t make sense to do an early pigeage and break them,” and late punch-down further extends the fermentation. Various Importers. A Becky Wasserman Selection, Le Serbet; fax 011- 333-80-24-29-70.