Musigny

Musigny is the vineyard over which you can spread my ashes. 

From my first acquaintance with Burgundy it always struck me that of all its famous sites, Musigny represented in purest form the qualities that everyone most admires about Burgundy. The wine has the capacity to deliver real authority in an almost weightless frame. How can it produce so many fireworks in the mouth and have such astonishing length and yet have such ethereal silky elegance at the same time ?  This is the wonder that draws so many to adore Burgundy over all other wines and here in Musigny that magic expresses itself with the clearest definition of all. There are some vineyards one could ague are equally great in different ways. But Musigny to me is simply the most Burgundian vineyard of all.

On my first visit to Burgundy 1n 1994 I did something I would not do now - I asked several of the  growers I met where they would most like to own a plot if they could have a parcel simply anywhere - and so often the response was Musigny.  Roselyn Seysses said Richebourg and related to me that her husband Jacques would say Chambertin but I recall no other exceptions.  Everybody else said Musigny. 

It is simply an astonishing vineyard. Honestly, it does not look so special.  Its rather a bland slope. But whenever I have drunk it I have felt a certain awe.  I have a certain reverance for it, as you can tell. And although a small number of bottles over the years have not fully risen to my expectations, I have yet to drink one that has not reminded me that this is no ordinary place.  It always restores my faith in Burgundy.  

If pressed I would probably put Chambolle Musigny Les Amoureuses in the same category but I find Musigny more majestic, more insistent in its length and more “serious”, whereas Amoureuses I find perhaps a little more sensual and overtly aromatic.