2012 Domaine de la Vougeraie, Chambolle-Musigny

The 2012 Chambolle-Musigny is laced with dark cherry, plum and spice notes. Here the flavors are broad, rich, creamy and intense to the core. This is an especially dark, somber 2012 Chambolle-Musigny clearly built for cellaring. Smoke and tar linger on the potent finish. The village Chambolle is mostly fruit from Argillierès and the 1er Cru Baudes, vinified with 70% whole clusters.

Saturated deep red. Explosive aromas and flavors of raspberry, strawberry, truffle and smoky minerality. Dense, sappy and concentrated, showing excellent lift and soil complexity to the flavors of small red berries, minerals and truffley underbrush. Seriously strong village wine with noteworthy finesse to its tannins.

The 2012 Chambolle-Musigny Village actually contains 40% (two barrels) of declassified premier cru fruit from “Les Baudes” and “Les Argillieres”. It has a dense, broody but attractive bouquet that showed just a little reduction that will disappear by the time of bottling. The palate is well-balanced with solid, assertive opening. There is a firm grip here, the oak needing to be absorbed towards the finish although there is plenty of concentration lent by the premier cru fruit. Good aging potential. Domaine de la Vougeraie was founded in 1998 when the domaines of Claudine Deschamps, Pierre Ponnelle, Louis Voilland and L’Heritier-Guyot were merged. I remember it well because at the time I was exporting L’Heritier-Guyot’s wines to Japan (to be frank, they were quite ordinary back then.) The man behind the venture was Jean-Claude Boisset, whose own considerable holdings meant that Domaine de la Vougeraie became a significant player in the Cote d’Or, with 37 hectares of prime vineyard including seven grand crus to their name. I have to be honest and say that like many others, I liked the first few vintages of their wine, but found them a little predictable and seemed to struggle for charm and personality. Perhaps that was a reflection of former winemaker Pascal Marchand applying the practices he had learned at Comte Armand: a lot of new oak with 100% de-stemmed fruit – not really my bag. When he departed for pastures new, incoming winemaker Pierre Vincent seemed to apply a gentler touch. The new oak is still part of the wines’ character, but there is certainly a more considered approach, plus he is more open to using whole cluster fruit. Managing such an array of wines with a relatively small team cannot be easy in challenging vintages such as 2012, or for that matter 2013. Pierre told me that his average yields were 22 hectoliters per hectare, though for the grand crus, they were down to 17 hectoliters per hectare. Importer: Boisset Family Estates, St. Helena, CA; tel. (800) 878-1123