The five barrels’ worth of Mugneret 2008 Nuits-St.-Georges Les Vignes Rondes – a lot that I frequently don’t get to taste here, from vines contiguous with their Chaignots – represented their first wine of the vintage to have gone into bottle, from which I tasted it. Salt-tinged, pungently herb-garlanded tart cassis and dark cherry offer real refreshment, though in a context of surprising palate breadth. Firm tannins rise to prominence in the finish here, blocking the sense of savor that accrues to the corresponding Chaignots. The recent bottling may have perturbed this, and I’d want to revisit it before hazarding a prognostication as to whether it will merit extended time in bottle in anticipation of softening. The cool concentration and acid preservation of 2008 as a vintage would seem to mirror the finely-chiseled, fresh-fruited, modest alcohol style one associates with the Mugneret sisters, but the striking and surprising thing about their collection of that vintage is its youthful richness and textural allure. (The low-pH 2008s finished at only 12-12.5% alcohol.) As Marie-Christine Mugneret points out, they dropped crop to promote ripeness and drying and as a result were optimally positioned to take advantage of the September turn in the weather … optimally, that is, except in terms of yields! Most lots did not finish malo for a full year, and I tasted the wines in February at various stages (as noted) between barrel and bottle. “The sorting we did in early September in the vineyards in 2006 all had to be done on the sorting table in 2007,” remarks Marie-Andree Mugneret, explaining that ripening was too rapid in the latter vintage – in which they began picking September 1 – to permit such a triage at the vine. Despite the relatively swift malos and ripe fruit of 2007, bottling extended all the way until July of last year (for the Chaignots), but the Mugnerets share my view that the wines should for the most part be enjoyed relatively young in the flush of their fruit. A Peter Vezan Selection (various importers), Paris; fax 011 33 1 42 55 42 93