2008 Jacques-Federic Mugnier Clos de la Marechale Premier Cru

Half bottle. What a difference temperature makes!  When I opened this half it was a bit cold and incommunicative, but now it is round and supple with no trace of 2008's notorious obduracy. Lots of jewelly fruit and sweetness.  It seems the perfect moment to start drinking it, from half anyway. So long as it is not too cool...My drink dates relate to the same wine in a standard bottle, for there are some fine tannins here.  Mugnier is really getting to grips with this great big vineyard. (JR)

Bright red. Pale rim. Nicely evolved nose with a suggestion of orange juice and mulberry flavours. Round, fully ripe fruit occludes the slightly dry finish. Very fluid and mellifluous. No scaring of the horses here. But it would be worth waiting a little while, and even then matching it carefully to chewy food. (JR)

The 2008 Nuits St. Georges Clos de la Marechale offers up black cherries, sweet spices, flowers and licorice, all of which meld together beautifully in a weightless, impeccably elegant style. Floral, minty notes add complexity and nuance on the refined finish. Anticipated maturity: 2014-2020. With each passing year Frederic Mugnier has let up on the reigns of winemaking and allowed the vintage to take center stage. His wines now reflect the unique qualities of each harvest to an exacting degree. Mugnier describes the 2009s as rich, powerful and exceptionally dense wines that will be at their most exciting in several decades’ time, or – as Mugnier says with his typically dry sense of humor – when he’s no longer around. The vintage was marked by one week of very hot weather towards the end of the growing season, although on average 2009 was not a hot year. The harvest began on September 10. For the 2009s Mugnier destemmed 100% of the fruit as he didn’t feel he had the phenolic ripeness in the stems to use whole clusters. Fermentations lasted about three weeks, an approach which is now pretty much consistent from year to year. ‘Long, slow and gentle,’ Mugnier says. The wines were racked once and were scheduled to be bottled between April and May 2011. The percentage of new oak barrels continues to drop and is now between 15-20% across the entire range. I also tasted all of the 2008s, a vintage in which Mugnier’s wines are stratospheric for their sheer beauty, elegance and pedigree. In 2008 the harvest began on September 26, two full weeks after 2009, which is pretty consistent across domaines in these two years. Today the 2008s appear to have more finesse and silkiness. This will be a fascinating vintage to follow here. A Becky Wasserman Selection, Le Serbet, various American importers, including: Martin Scott Wines, Little Neck, NY; tel. (516) 327-0808; Veritas Imports, Beverly Hills, CA; tel. (310) 205-3803; Toepfer Imports LLC, CO; tel. (303) 818-7640