2007 Domaine Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier Chambolle-Musigny

Lightly-cooked cherry and beet root tinged with ginger and tamarind on the nose of Mugnier’s 2007 Chambolle-Musigny follow on a quite sumptuous palate underlain by fine tannins and finishing with admirable persistence. This displays flattering superficial sweetness one doesn’t so often associate with Chateau de Chambolle, ‘though it also misses the finesse or intrigue and floral or mineral dimensions one looks for. I would plan on enjoying it over the next 2-3 years. Frederic Mugnier’s 2008s – which I last tasted shortly before their March bottling – did not experience the exceptionally late malo-lactic transformation that characterized so many wines of that vintage. Yields were especially low thanks not only to vintage-typical millerandage, but – particularly in the case of Les Amoureuses – to the vines’ slow recovery from the shock of 2007 hail. A Becky Wasserman Selection, Le Serbet; fax 011-333-80-24-29-70

Medium red. A cocktail of red fruits on the nose. Lush and sweet but without the brilliant definition or lift of the 2008. A somewhat more muscular style, with dark fruits complicated by notes of leather and flowers. Still a bit youthfully subdued.

Medium red. Pungent aromas of strawberry, cherry, raspberry, flowers and blood orange. Pure, juicy and on the lean side; noteworthy more for its energy than for its flesh. But this has beautiful fruit.