Ask any top winemaker and they will promise you that they take as much care over their basic wine as their grand cru. It is, after all, more affordable and there’s a lot more of it, so it is very much their calling card, and I suspect it’s more challenging to produce a great village blend year in year out than it is some lofty grand cru. If you believe in the sanctity of terroir, well, you’d have to struggle to make a really bad Musigny…
And of course, these days any village wine bearing the hyphenated appendage of Musigny, Romanee or Chambertin is probably all that any mere mortal can afford, especially if it comes from one of the cult winemakers.
Chambolle-Musigny is a small village tucked under the hillside at the end of the combe (valley), and the main square such as it be houses a church and the 3 stars – de Vogue, the biggest and perhaps these days the less assured, with both fans and detractors (for the record when the village wine was still reasonably priced, I used to love it), and then slightly uphill and across the way the two megastars of the day – Christophe Roumier and Frederic Mugnier.
I have drunk quite a few of their ‘other wines’ meaning the 1e cru Clos de la Marechale in Nuits for Mugnier and Clos de la Bussiere in Morey for Roumier, and, yes they are very good, but no, they are not Chambolle and don’t taste like it. Sadly, they now carry too much of the price tag for wanabee drinkers too, but I’m not sure that the Chambolle stardust rubs off that much on much lesser terroirs.
So a chance to taste the two real Chambolles, all be they ‘only’ the village level, is a treat.
2011 was a year somewhat written off by many, and often likened to 2004 with its pyrazine affected ‘ladybug’ taint. Whether 2004 was really polluted by a plague of squashed ladybirds on the grapes or not, I have tipped way too many horrible green wines down the sink and was thus worried when the 2011s appeared on the wine rack as ready to drink. But so far, all the 2011s we have drunk have been delicious, elegant, lighter in weight and, yes, ready for business now, but full of soft fruit and elegance.
It was a very hot spring, and some feared another heatwave vintage, but the summer was pretty rotten, and the worry quickly switched to rot not over-cooked berries. In the end both Mugnier and Roumier reported lowish alcohols but not that much need to sort out the bad grapes and a very friendly vintage arrived, all be it not one for the long haul.
My 50th birthday was on the 2nd September 2011 and I do remember seeing a fair few ladybirds on the crates of grapes waiting to be pressed into Meursault at Camille Giroud in Beaune, and was very excited to see the first Corton grapes loaded into the press at Romanee-Conti. Somehow, I suspect that neither domaine had too many little critters swimming around in their fermenting must. Certainly, the Meursault enjoyed a decade on was spotless.
When comparing two neighbourly village wines from the same vintage, you of course look for similarities, but also try to guess where the differences might come from. Mugnier’s village Chambolle comes from some declassified 1e cru Les Plantes which sits north of the fabled Les Amoureuses in the middle of Chambolle, and the village section of La Combe d’Orveau which is beyond Musigny at the southern tip of Chambolle just above the Echezeaux grand cru. Roumier’s includes declassified 1e cru from the top class Les Fuees which abuts the Bonnes Mares grand cru (& Morey St Denis). I’m not sure where the rest of the village vines are located.
So much for the terroir then. And the winemaking? Both are stars of elegance, low oak and low intervention, Mugnier being wholly destemmed, but Roumier using a few stems when he sees fit. Given just that, and tasting the two wines blind, I’d have picked the wrong wine as possibly the Roumier with some stem addition as stems supposedly remove a bit of alcohol and colour and add floral aromatics, all 3 of which were (of course) apparent in not the Roumier but the totally destemmed Mugnier.
Shows how much I know.
So how were they?
The Mugnier was a pale faded red, the Roumier deeper and darker. The alcohols were 12.5% and 13% respectively. The nose for the first was very sauvage and gloriously aromatic, with soft red fruits, florality and an almost sugary touch. The wine was delicate and silky, the finish somehow lingering but very soft. A wine of delicacy, light and ethereal.
For the Roumier, the fruit was darker, more cherry than strawberry, the texture a bit denser, creamier, the finish showing still a little rasp of tannin, but again, the wine was soft and silky.
In fact, the similarity was that beautiful silky mouthfeel, one of the hallowed (but very much not always apparent) standards of Chambolle. Two wines of great elegance, but otherwise totally different. If the Roumier seemed more mainstream, like de Vogue, and beautifully made, the Mugnier was the more unusual with its palid hue and sauvage-floral aromatics which made me think of a lighter version of Domaine Leroy as I have had some of her wines which have a telltale light colour and often sauvage and very floral, soaring bouquets. (And just to prove my lack of tastebuds again, Mugnier is not a fan of biodynamics and eschews stems whereas Lalou Bize-Leroy is the Arch Priestess of both).
When the great and the good score these village wines, they do so with ‘class hierarchy’ firmly in mind and so they always end up at 89-91, because anything higher than that would stray into premier or even grand cru territory. This may be clinically, technically correct, but is so boring and, for me, often misses the point. Yes, a village Chambolle, or Meursault from the incomparable Jean-Marc Roulot may not have the depth, power, complexity and longevity of its bigger brethren, but in terms of pure pleasure and beauty we have drunk a lot of these village wines that deliver more than many a higher rated premier cru. We have had a bunch of various premier cru Burgundies of late, from all over, and, for instance, the Mugnier Chambolle was more memorable than most of them, all be it a humble village denomination, and the Roulot Meursault equally so. Forget the classification and focus on what’s in the glass…
Sadly, I will never be able to compare Mugnier’s and Roumier’s Les Amoureuses, Bonnes Mares or Musigny, but their village wines offer a compelling and delicious snapshot as to just what Chambolle Musigny can and should be. Two very different cuts of the same jewel.
Wishing you all a 2025 full of laughter, love, beauty and just the odd glass of Chambolle or Meursault...
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