November 5, 2007
I need to declare publicly that I have recently formed a strong new emotional attachment. It started as a flirtation, then developed into a deep admiration and loving friendship. Elements of lust appeared periodically, I tried to walk away from it, but couldn’t. The lure was irresistable. I kept getting pulled back in deeper and deeper. One reaches a point where you realize that there is something you can no longer deny, and you must face up to it. And so, I am happy to state to the world that I have fallen head-over-heels for the wines of Domaine Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier in Chambolle-Musigny.
I’ve been buying. cellaring and drinking “Freddy’s” wines for many many years, and have always had a crush on them. It finally hit me over the head at our La Paulée dinner the other night that I do indeed love them. There is an unmatched grace and purity to his wines – they are drop-dead sexy wihout trying to be. They are ethereal, nearly weightless at times, and truly unlike any others. They’re not flashy, but sometimes they let you glimpse a hint of the bare thigh above the stockings. The words finesse and elegance don’t even begin to do justice to the silken kisses these wines bestow on you. In the mouth they feel like the tenderest caress you ever had from the prettiest girl you ever knew. And then they captivate your soul. They make you just want to take off and run away together, so you can get away from daily life and just focus on the beauty. This is not an obsession, I’m not going to let this take over my life and get to the point where I neglect my well-being or responsibilities. It’s a healthy attraction, but damn they are beautiful.
Beauty of course is in the eye of the beholder. Freddy’s wines have gone under the radar of many for quite some time – usually overhadowed by the more famous Chambolle-based domaines of Christophe Roumier and Comte de Vogüé. Within the last three years or so the “secret” has apparently gotten out, and now the world-wide demand for the wines and the resulting prices have gone through the stratosphere. Ah, but what price perfection! The pendulum appears to be swinging away from the bigger-is-better school of wine, and that arc is leading many to the world of Freddy. They’re not for everyone, just as no piece of music or no poem is everyone’s cup of tea. But be forewarned, if you fall, you are liable to fall deeply. It’s a haunting melody you can’t get out of your head.
For the record, I have no business connection or interest in these wines whatsoever, I do not import them, in fact I’ve only met the man himself once briefly. All I know is that I want to live out my days savoring as much of his wines as cirumstances allow. If I could choose my last meal, I’d go for Thomas Keller’s foie gras torchon from the French Laundry, the full truffle-menu at Alain Ducasse in Paris, and an assortment of patisserie from François Payard in New York, all tied together with a perfectly mature bottle of Mugnier Musigny. (Of course we’d have to start with a magnum of ’85 Krug Clos du Mesnil for the aperitif, and then have a bottle of ’85 Jayer Richebourg for back-up, just in case!)
It was a bottle of DRC’s ’59 La Tâche that was my first and perhaps most enduring love, and the wine that lead me to where I sit today. With no disrespect to that magical wine, and without being unfaithful to it in my heart, I’ve got a new mistress. Appropriately, one of Mugnier’s best wines is the Chambolle-Musigny “Les Amoureuses”, which of course means “the lovers”…
