2012 Domaine Dujac Chambolle-Musigny

Bright medium red. Red raspberry and spicy oak on the nose. Supple and creamy in the mouth; less complex than the Morey today but deeper and more savory, in the style of the 2013 version of this wine. The tight, rising finish calls for a few years of patience.

The 2012 Chambolle-Musigny Village comes from three parcels. It has a tightly wound bouquet with blackcurrant pastille and briary scents. The palate is quite structured on the entry with hints of brine. It is underpinned by crisp acidity and quite firm tannins at the moment. Just slightly aloof perhaps, I hope this develops just a touch more charm by the time of bottling. Tasting in the cellars of Domaine Dujac in Morey Saint Denis is always an educational, enlightening experience, granting you a useful picture of how some of the top vineyards performed in the Cote de Nuits during a given year. Alec Seysses was on hand to guide me around his particularly cold cellar, one of those occasions when my warm hands might be bad for pastry, but ideal for warming glasses. “It was the fourth poor year in a row in terms of quantity,” he explained, showing me the concrete eggs now employed at the domaine, a less common sight here in Burgundy compared to Bordeaux. “although in 2012 we had a regular crop of the village crus and the younger vines did well. We averaged around 20 hectoliters per hectare. Everything was racked in early September but there is some reduction from the cold cellar. The softness of the tannins strikes me as a character of the vintage. It is more a dark fruit vintage than a red fruit vintage. Sugars were between 12.5 and 13%, with a few 13.3% here and there. I find the wines similar to 2010, but the 2012 is a little more charming because the tannins are not quite as strong.” Tasting through the complete range of wines from the small batch of negociant wines under “Dujac Fils et Pere” to the clutch of grand crus, it was clear that propitious terroirs that influenced the wines greatly. The village crus were mostly commendable in their own right, but the real excitement begins as you broach the premier crus, where the barrel samples achieve high degrees of complexity and nuance. Like many of the top growers, I was pleased to see individual terroirs articulated with great clarity in 2012, perhaps more so than the 2011s. These barrel samples seemed to contain so much energy: tightly coiled springs of fermented grape juice, brimming with tension and freshness that Jeremy and Alec will endeavor to capture once in bottle. I have little doubt that they will succeed. Importers: The Sorting Table, Napa, CA; tel. (415) 491-4724; Martin Scott Wines, Little Neck, NY; tel. (516) 327-0808; Chambers & Chambers, San Francisco, CA; tel. (415) 642-5500 and though several merchants in the UK including Berry Brother & Rudd.

Medium-deep red. Black raspberry on the nose. Sweeter in the middle than the Morey, but also offers a sappy freshness to the very ripe dark fruit flavors. Finishes with sweeter tannins and very good length. The yields in these village wines were in the healthy 42 hectoliters-per-hectare range, noted Jeremy Seysses, as the vines in these holdings are not old.