2021 Chambolle-Musigny Les Fuées 1er Cru

You gotta love Frédéric Mugnier. As I have written before, what comes across as an almost ambivalent attitude to his métier, as if to say, ‘Did I give up a career in engineering to make Musigny?’ inevitably turns into a discussion about winemaking and the comings and goings of Burgundy. Mugnier is never shy of airing his opinion (either face-to-face or in print). To quote another winemaker from earlier that day, Mugnier is forever the contrarian. I think he wouldn’t want it any other way.

“It was an especially challenging growing season,” he tells me. “In early August, I was anxious as it was too hot, and the vines were not looking good, some berries already shriveling. Some already tasted a bit oxidized. But I like to be pessimistic. Fortunately, there was enough rain just before the harvest to revive the grapes. The harvest began September 1 and took place over seven days. There was not much triage, and the vinification was normal. The wines were raised in around 15% new oak for all the cuvées and no stems.”

The wines are a mixed bag. I felt that in juxtaposition with Mugnier’s other cuvées, the Chambolle Les Fuées exhibited a little sur-maturité. It’s normally a wine I like, more so than even his Bonnes-Mares, so I’ll revisit it once in bottle. The highlights predictably include the Les Amoureuses and Musigny Vieilles Vignes, the latter more taciturn aromatically but convincing in the mouth. Readers should note that Mugnier continues his policy of not releasing this wine until it has some bottle maturity. I tasted the current release, the 2016, which I published as a Cellar Favorite.

“I like it when it’s difficult. It’s like the good old days,” quips Frédéric Mugnier, and to be honest, if those words had been uttered from anyone else’s mouths, then I would have laughed…but he means it. My visits to Mugnier are one of my most cherished, not only because of the wines but because our conversation habitually meanders into related topics upon which he does not pull his punches. Today, we speak about the current frenzied demand for Burgundy and how it has changed the region’s spirit, the spectre of global warming that clearly plays on his mind and the essence of what a Burgundy wine ought to be.

“The year was relatively cold and rainy, which made the work in the vineyard more difficult,” he continues. “We had to make sure we sprayed at the right time against mildew, which was not easy. We only sprayed copper and sulphur, though I’m not organic, and that included weekends. It’s good to have a tractor that is not too heavy but remains light enough with good spraying capability. For that, you need a turbine, and turbines are heavy. We didn’t have too much damage from mildew. It was not easy to reach full maturity, and in the end, it became a competition between ripeness and rot. There are many vintages like that, and the wines turn out to be delicious, delicate and seductive. I think 2021 is that kind of vintage. They say: vines must suffer to make great wine. But I think it’s the winemaker that must suffer. People evaluate wines after a year. Look at all the restaurants in Beaune with 2020 Grand Crus and all their lists [Mugnier rolls his eyes and sighs]. I judge my wines on how they taste after ten years.”

“We started the picking on 16 September, and the sanitary conditions for the bunches were fine. My crop is comparable in volume to recent vintages. We cropped at 25hl/ha, whereas average is 35hl/ha, and alcohol levels reached around 12.5%, just the Chambolle Village was chaptalized a little. Early samples that we take for analysis are often lower [in potential alcohol], but the final degree is often one degree higher than expected, so I end up wondering why I chaptalized in the first place.”

In many ways, 2021 is the kind of growing season that might throw obstacles in the way of Mugnier, but the style sutures neatly with his style of wine. Standouts include a spellbinding Les Amoureuses and, predictably, the Musigny Vieilles Vignes, both shade the Bonnes-Mares that I find relatively skinny and missing a bit of meat on its bones; nothing unexpected given the growing season, plus the fact that this has rarely been Mugnier’s strongest card to play.