2008 Musigny

Prieur’s 2008 Musigny displays rich, ripe cherry and blackberry fruit though not the vivacity or brightness I associate with most of the best wines of its vintage. That this wine grows at the cru’s heat-trapping southern edge might be offered as one explanation of this, but in fact, as a group the Prieur 2008s are long on sweetness of fruit and new wood but not on liveliness or cut. Here, there is a quite stewed fruit character, with humus, nutmeg, tobacco, black tea, and chalk adding variety; sumptuous richness; and a lingering, sweet finish. I miss the floral, mineral, and carnal dimension that this great site is capable of projecting, but in its rather opaque manner, this certainly impresses, and perhaps it will gain focus and complexity in the final months of its elevage. I expect it could be safely followed for 12-15 years. Martin Prieur, oenologist Nadine Gublin, and their team hung tight in the 2008 vintage and ended up harvesting very ripe-tasting Pinots, at the price of yields dramatically reduced by the necessary selection (to the extent hail and green harvest had not already cut them back). As a group, these 2008s tended toward a not entirely felicitous alliance of tannic abrasion and toasty, smoky, ultimately slightly palate-drying new wood, although many of the wines showed more harmoniously when I re-tasted them in April than they had the month prior, and I have accordingly favored my later impressions in the notes that follow. It may well be true by some measure – as Gublin opined – that the 2008s here are more consistently ripe than were the 2006s, but for now I find more depth, harmony, and charm in the latter. Their 2007s – which the domaine began picking already on August 30 – are not currently displaying much of the charm they showed very early on, and while the estate’s staff hope is that this will be regained (and certainly the wines have “structure” in the sense of tannin), I continue to be skeptical in general about deferring those pleasures that this vintage offers. In many vineyards, incidentally, 2008 represented the third consecutive vintage in which Prieur had harvested scarcely more than 20 hectoliters per hectare. Importer: Frederick Wildman & Sons, New York, NY; tel. (212) 355-0700

Deep red with ruby highlights. High-pitched but youthfully reticent aromas of raspberry, flowers, spices and white pepper. Sappy and imploded, with plenty of chewy depth and density but very tight in the early going and evolving slowly. This, too, needs several months more of elevage The wine's minerality and inner-mouth lift suggest it will be a successful if very serious style of Musigny, but today the finish is austere-verging-on-rustic.