I am sitting on the porch contentedly drinking a Glantenay Volnay Santenots 2010. It is delicious, plenty of fruit, a lovely minerality, and some nice lavender elements. Later tonight, I will be cooking a beautifully marbled NY strip, which will pair perfectly with the wine. I paid $64 for it last year. Is it DRC? No of course not, but I can’t imagine deriving that much more pleasure from it. Is it Mugneret Gibourg or Rousseau, again not, but it is not that far away in quality, and if I served it blind to you, I am sure you would also love it. But the price differential is huge, a quarter of the price of the MG village, and less than 5% of the cheapest DRC.
This market is ludicrous, and I have no idea why people are buying into the narrative. $250 plus for a village wine??!! Burgundy is making better wine across the board than ever before, and the gap between the big boys and rest is closing, yet the price differential has never been greater. Please explain as if to a five year old why this market confounds all logic.
I did a triple take with full drink spit when I saw a local vendors price for the Mugnier Chambolle recently. im positive im missing something in why this is true so what is the reason its double the price of the Marachale??
Wow, didn’t realize I was drinking down the value of my burg stash week before last when I opened the 2009 and 2010 MG vosnes on successive nights (and, oh yeah, the 2001 Ruchottes Chambertin the Saturday before). Almost like drinking Truchot!
Couldn’t have said it better myself, Mark. Outside of a handful of producers, Cote de Beaune 1ers still represent excellent value. Also, I am finding that Cote de Nuits village wines - again, outside of the trophy set - are better than ever. Village Gevreys and the like are absolutely better than I remember from 5-10 years ago.
I do think that the overall quality of burgundy has improved but also think there’s a stylistic shift to make the wines more accessible at younger ages. Not sure what the long term effect on ageability will be.
I agree with both of you, but I am more in the Alan Weinberg camp where it’s almost painful to even open any of my existing stocks of high quality Cotes de Nuits Burgundies. “I think I’ll have a bottle of Mugneret-Gibourg Clos Vougeot tonight. Oh, wait, I could buy plane tickets to go to…”
100% agreed. Global warming, as well as style choices, are making the wines more accessible early and more openly delicious early on. I look at TNs for recent vintages of Bourgogne rouge and the descriptors would never have crossed my mind as being applicable to thise wines 25 years ago.
Maybe they’ll age well, acid is a big component of longevity but, as you noted a while back, a lot of these wines are fine to drink now and don’t require a mandatory 10-20 year cellaring anymore.
I would’ve agreed like 6 months ago, but it seems like the prices for back vintages for producers with higher current prices have started to catch up; for awhile older mugneret gibourg, arnoux-lachaux, and trapet were relative “deals” but that doesn’t seem to be true as many anymore. I was buying older trapet chambertin for 200/btl, A-L suchots for 1-200/btl and RSV for 3-400 a bottle last year, and M-G clos vougeot from early 2000s was $2-300. Not so much, now.
Clos de la Marechale is the largest monopole in burgundy. It’s arguably in one of the least favored sites in the Cote de Nuits (literally the most southern part) and has poor vine genetics. That it’s as good as it is (and people debate it’s merits) is down to Mugnier’s remarkable skill as a winemaker.
Mugnier’s Chambolle village has a fair amount of 1er cru Plantes in it, and is a much smaller production and is, arguably, the best Chambolle village being made today.
