Robert Parker's Wine Advocate 30/06/2010

A concentration of wild tiny berries red and black seems to inform the nose and palate of Mugnier’s 2007 Bonnes Mares, with pungent brown spices, medicinal herbal concentrates, and game adding site-typical complexity. The compactness here seems to mirror the wine’s flavor concentration, and an underlying note of crushed stone lends a hint of austerity in the long, bittersweet finish. All in all, this is hardly a typical representative of its vintage, and I am willing to believe that its relatively unevolved but impressive personality presages a decade or more of fascinating potential.

Frederic Mugnier’s 2008s – which I last tasted shortly before their March bottling – did not experience the exceptionally late malo-lactic transformation that characterized so many wines of that vintage. Yields were especially low thanks not only to vintage-typical millerandage, but – particularly in the case of Les Amoureuses – to the vines’ slow recovery from the shock of 2007 hail.

Here the nose offers a clear step up in aromatic elegance as well as complexity with relatively high-toned red pinot fruit, stone, underbrush and warm earth notes merging into rich and exceptionally fresh medium full flavors that are quite forward, indeed even supple and tender, that also culminate in a focused, energetic and lingering finish where, like the Fuées there is a very subtle edginess. An understated Bonnes Mares that is built more along the lines of finesse than power and muscle. Drink: 2014+
-Allen Meadows, burghound.com, issue 37. Tasted: Jan 30, 2010