A ripe, fresh and elegant array is comprised by notes of red and dark currant, spice and a violet top note. The beautifully textured and solidly concentrated medium weight flavors possess a lovely innate tension that carries over to the youthfully austere, balanced, minerally and impressively long finale. This is an excellent Chambolle villages.

Score: 90-92 Allen Meadow (AM), Bourghound (BH), January 2024

The 2022 Chambolle-Musigny Village has a clean, precise bouquet with ebullient red berry fruit notes laced with a crushed stone aroma. The palate is medium-bodied, crisp and taut with fine tannins. It´s seemingly put on some weight since I tasted it from barrel. This is lovely.

True criticism must never be a personal attack upon an individual. That shows a lack of class. Winemaking is a poker game against Mother Nature. You don’t always win. It’s a game in which hindsight is a precious thing. I have been a fan of Frédéric Mugnier’s wines since I first visited over 20 years ago. But in 2023, the wines fell below the high bar he set. On a day when I was able to taste multiple Bonnes-Mares or Musigny, the shortcomings could not be ignored. Mugnier, without question the most candid of any Burgundy winemaker, understood that 2023 is not a vintage in which the wind blew in his direction. Even last year, I remember him lamenting the season that had passed.“It was terrible,” Mugnier says, never one to mince his words. His sigh is beyond compare. “Though I’m rarely happy with the harvest or the quality of the grapes. Twenty-three should have been very similar to 2022, and up to mid-July, it was. Then we had rain at regular intervals – not a deluge, but it was almost every week. The berries became unexpectedly swollen and if I’d known, I would have done a green harvest. That might have diminished the yield but not necessarily improved quality since the berries would have been even bigger. So, the yield is more than I would have liked. The larger berries had thin skins so this risked acid rot. A small amount is sufficient to create vinegary aromas. This made me anxious. We started picking on September 7 in Bonnes-Mares and stopped and started picking due to rain and varying degrees of maturity. We finished on September 22 with the Musigny. We did a lot of sorting during the picking and at reception. Everything is destemmed.”Because of Mugnier’s deserved standing, I can understand that this might rankle with some Burgundy lovers, but I have never pulled punches and don’t intend to begin now. The wines in 2023 just miss the depth and concentration that you expect from propitious climats such as Les Amoureuses or Les Fuées. They are sleight, a little enfeebled by the rains, so there is a distinct lack of grip on the finishes. To experience Mugnier in full flight, seek out his 2022 Les Amoureuses, which is just beautiful, or the 2017 Musigny that will be put onto the market this year as he now releases it much later. The remainder of barrel maturation might add some weight to his nascent 2023s, but overall, this is just one of those vintages that got away from one of Burgundy’s best winemakers. You can’t win ‘em all.

Score: 91 Neal Martin (NM), Vinous Media (VM), January 2025

Mugnier´s 2022 Chambolle-Musigny Village offers up aromas of cherries, raspberries, orange rind, peonies and smoked duck, followed by a medium-bodied, supple and fleshy palate that´s succulent and charming, with a harmonious, giving profile.

Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier picked over the first week of September, destemming his crop and maturing it with only a minimal supporting presence of new oak, as usual. Fermentations, he told me, went smoothly. The resulting wines are supple and suave, without quite the same drama as the unusually concentrated 2020s, the utterly sensual 2019s or the filigreed 2021s. With the exception of the domaine´s sole white wine, they don´t show much of the heat of the vintage. They seem set to offer long, broad and immensely pleasurable drinking windows.

Score: 89-91 William Kelley (WK), The Wine Advocate (WA), January 2024