About This Vineyard
Frederic Mugnier’s philsophy is summarized very simply: let the message in the vineyard come through. Mugnier’s background is engineering and he was a commercial pilot who came to wine as a second career. He started crafting wine while still a pilot and released his first vintage in 1985 from 4 hectares of Chambolle Musigny vineyards (including.53 hectare of Les Amoureuses, .36 hectare of Bonne Mares, and a little over 1 hectare of Musigny – second only to Comte de Vogue).
By his own admission, he didn’t know anything about winemaking initially. He attended viticulture school in Beaune and experimented a lot. Over time his experience has served him better than formal winemaking education. In 2004 his Domaine changed dramatically when Faiveley’s lease of the Mugnier family’s 9.55-hectare Nuits St. George 1er Cru Clos de la Maréchale expired. This more than tripled the size of Mugnier’s vineyard holdings to 13.5 hectares. With the assumption of the largest monopole in Burgundy, his Domaine became quite large, and he was forced to build a winery and hire several workers to assist him.
Mugnier’s wines are among the purest in Burgundy. These organic wines are unadorned and unadultered. They do not overwhelm – the drinker must listen. Most people want volume turned up in wine, but Mugnier’s wines are more subtle and the drinker must make an effort to really appreciate them. The wines require plenty of bottle age.
