2007 Clos Vougeot

The Mugneret 2007 Clos Vougeot leads with game and cooked dark berries accompanied by alkaline, humus-like, and saline mineral overtones. Flatteringly polished on the palate and with a deep, marrow-rich meatiness rare for the vintage, this displays irresistible primary juiciness and admirable sense of buoyancy and of transparency to mineral nuance in its long finish. Here is one among what I intuit are very few 2007s that will be worth holding onto for a decade. The cool concentration and acid preservation of 2008 as a vintage would seem to mirror the finely-chiseled, fresh-fruited, modest alcohol style one associates with the Mugneret sisters, but the striking and surprising thing about their collection of that vintage is its youthful richness and textural allure. (The low-pH 2008s finished at only 12-12.5% alcohol.) As Marie-Christine Mugneret points out, they dropped crop to promote ripeness and drying and as a result were optimally positioned to take advantage of the September turn in the weather … optimally, that is, except in terms of yields! Most lots did not finish malo for a full year, and I tasted the wines in February at various stages (as noted) between barrel and bottle. “The sorting we did in early September in the vineyards in 2006 all had to be done on the sorting table in 2007,” remarks Marie-Andree Mugneret, explaining that ripening was too rapid in the latter vintage – in which they began picking September 1 – to permit such a triage at the vine. Despite the relatively swift malos and ripe fruit of 2007, bottling extended all the way until July of last year (for the Chaignots), but the Mugnerets share my view that the wines should for the most part be enjoyed relatively young in the flush of their fruit. A Peter Vezan Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011 33 1 42 55 42 93

Good medium red. Perfumed, high-pitched aromas of red fruits, musky minerality and subtle soil tones. Silky, suave and sweet, saturating the mouth with flavor without leaving behind any impression of weight. Lovely energy and precision here. Easier to taste today than the Ruchottes but built to age.

Good bright, full red. Black cherry, licorice and new oak on the nose, along with a distinct pepper and menthol austerity. Very ripe, broad and rich but not yet expressive; dense and sappy but revealing no easy sweetness today. This very young wine boasts excellent lift in the middle palate and finishes with serious breadth and tannic structure.