Robert Parker''s Wine Advocate 02/05/2011 The 2008 Nuits St. Georges Clos de la Marechale offers up black cherries, sweet spices, flowers and licorice, all of which meld together beautifully in a weightless, impeccably elegant style. Floral, minty notes add complexity and nuance on the refined finish. Anticipated maturity: 2014-2020. With each passing year Frederic Mugnier has let up on the reigns of winemaking and allowed the vintage to take center stage. His wines now reflect the unique qualities of each harvest to an exacting degree. Mugnier describes the 2009s as rich, powerful and exceptionally dense wines that will be at their most exciting in several decades’ time, or – as Mugnier says with his typically dry sense of humor – when he’s no longer around. The vintage was marked by one week of very hot weather towards the end of the growing season, although on average 2009 was not a hot year. The harvest began on September 10. For the 2009s Mugnier destemmed 100% of the fruit as he didn’t feel he had the phenolic ripeness in the stems to use whole clusters. Fermentations lasted about three weeks, an approach which is now pretty much consistent from year to year. ‘Long, slow and gentle,’ Mugnier says. The wines were racked once and were scheduled to be bottled between April and May 2011. The percentage of new oak barrels continues to drop and is now between 15-20% across the entire range. I also tasted all of the 2008s, a vintage in which Mugnier’s wines are stratospheric for their sheer beauty, elegance and pedigree. In 2008 the harvest began on September 26, two full weeks after 2009, which is pretty consistent across domaines in these two years. Today the 2008s appear to have more finesse and silkiness. This will be a fascinating vintage to follow here. Robert Parker's Wine Advocate 30/06/2010 I tasted several lots of Mugnier’s 2008 Nuits-St.-Georges Clos de la Marechale prior to the final assemblage of their extensive volume (this monopole comprises more than 20 acres) and hence prior to a final determination of the 15-20% that will have been declassified into a cuvee known as “Clos des Fourches.” Scents of incense, brown spices, purple plum, and beetroot follow on a palate of rich ripeness, sumptuous texture, and underlying earthiness. A sense of salted rare meat juices lends irresistible savor to a wine of surprising luxuriance for 2008, yet at the same time surprising finesse and tannic refinement given the performance of its four predecessors. (This site was vinified and bottled by Faiveley for decades.) Around 20% – typical for wines at this address – was raised in new wood, “but it gets less and less each year,” remarked Mugnier with a glint in his eye, “and who knows, maybe one day, there’ll be no new barrels!” 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. (90-91)

A distinctly earthy and anise-infused mix of sour cherry and blue berry fruit that displays whiffs of crushed herbs and pepper merges into detailed, pure and almost delicate middle weight flavors that possess a sophisticated mouth feel and fine length. I should point out though that while there is no rusticity present, the very firm tannins are not as refined as those of the Fuées.