2015 Musigny 0,75l Comte de Vogue

Tasted blind, the 2015 Musigny Vieilles Vignes Grand Cru was also showing extremely well, unfurling in the glass with aromas of ripe cherries, rose petal, dark chocolate, licorice and incense, displaying its framing of new oak a little more obviously than when I tasted it a few months ago. On the palate, the wine is full-bodied, ample and complete, with a rich chassis of firm but fine tannins, a deep—even dense—core of fruit and a long, lingering finish. Like the Bonnes Mares, this was immediately identifiable as a de Vogüé wine, but it spoke just as eloquently of Musigny. It's a cuvée that always tastes spectacular from barrel, so it's wonderful to see it living up to expectations in bottle.

Bright, dark ruby-red. Wonderfully scented, laid-back aromas of black raspberry, menthol and pungent stony minerality. Dense, sweet and very pure, with its fruit flavors of cassis sorbet and pomegranate accented by Oriental spices and minerals. This spreads out magically to saturate the palate without leaving any impression of weight. This is surprisingly approachable today owing to its opulence and sweetness but surely it will shut down in bottle at some point. The yield here was just 20 hectoliters per hectare in 2015, and winemaker François Millet told me he "was cautious not to push this wine because there was so little juice in the grapes." This wine was actually quite tight when I first sampled it from barrel in November of 2016 but today it's downright velvety and neither overripe nor excessively tannic.