2016 Bourgogne Rouge

Pascal Mugneret, who was an engineer before returning to his family’s seven-hectare estate and eventually taking over winemaking duties from his father Gérard with vintage 2005, applies a scientist’s approach to viticulture and vinification. He keeps charts on all of his wines, including details about their vinification. But he made clear to me that he’s not a revolutionary. “We don’t discover things; we reveal things that have been forgotten.”

Mugneret started harvesting in 2016 on September 22, noting that he prefers to have more freshness “even at the expense of a bit less concentration and phenolic maturity.” The estate lost 40% of its normal production in '16, mostly due to the frost. Potential alcohol levels were around 12.5% and Mugneret chaptalized by only about 0.3 degree. The malos finished early, in December of ‘16, and that explains why some ‘16s had been bottled by the time of my January visit, while others were in vats (his Vosne Suchots, Nuits Boudots and Echézeaux were still in fûts). Mugneret does not do a pre-fermentation cold soak because he vinifies with a portion of whole clusters (he only started using vendange entier in 2012, which he believes “will allow his wines to age more harmoniously, assuming the stems are ripe, of course”) and makes his wines with low levels of SO2; nor does he believe in further maceration after the fermentations have finished.

He ages his wines in 25% to 50% new oak and only pumps his wines once—from small tanks into the larger vats he uses for bottling—but he’s building an addition to his winery so that he can carry out even this final step by gravity. He has recently switched to a denser, wider, longer cork with a "mirror face" on one end—a side with no physical defects. As it provides a perfect surface, it helps Mugneret preserve the purity of his low-sulfur wines. But it's an added expense, as Mugneret must manually orient the corks prior to bottling to make sure that it’s the polished end that’s in contact with the wine.

Mugneret also told me about a technique called crystallization sensible, which was originally discovered by Rudolf Steiner in the early 20th century and that he began using in 2017 as “another way to see wines, because analysis and tastings are not enough.” One of the leading practitioners of crystallization sensible in France today is enologist Margarethe Chapelle and her laboratory, Oenocristal. She begins with drops of various wines, putting them in a copper chlorate solution. They are crystallized by evaporation, and the shape of the crystals can provide a lot of information about what Mugneret described as “the vibrating state of the wine,” including its susceptibility to brettanomyces and its ability to resist oxidation. In fact, he actually showed me “pictures” of the crystals formed by his various wines.

As for his 2015s, Mugneret said that 2016 is more his style. He believes that the warmest years are better for Burgundy’s regional wines and less interesting for the crus. He’s not keen on past hot vintages like 2003, 2005 and 2009 and feels that “it’s okay if the ‘15s are more austere,” by which I assume he means that this is a positive sign for these wines. He emphasized that he doesn’t pay a lot of attention to huge concentration, noting that a wine ages more on its acidity and balance. Mugneret cited Romanée-Conti as a wine that evolves for decades on its perfect harmony, not its power, as long as it has sufficient concentration.