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Friday, December 30, 2016

Domaine Faiveley Musigny



Domaine Faiveley Musigny, the Unicorn has landed!
Most days of the week I have sales reps bringing wines in for me to taste and from their perspective hopefully buy for our shelves or floor stacks (tough job but someone has to do it). Often the sales pitch focuses on the production of a wine, that it comes from a single vineyard, that it is very limited a production usually less than 1000 cases and that we would be one of the few places nation wide to carry said wine. Well here is my sales pitch for the only bottle of Domaine Faiveley Musigny I have ever seen: This wine comes from one of the most prized vineyards in Burgundy, Musigny, which is just over 10 Hectares large with an annual production, in a good year, of some 3 thousand cases for all 10 Domaines that own land in Musigny. Now 70% of that land is owned by Comte de Vogue, which leaves very little for the other 9 producers and only .03 hectares for Domaine Faiveley. In case you are wondering .03 hectares is just bigger than a tennis court and makes about 150 bottles, not cases but bottles, of wine a year. To Say we are excited to be getting 1 of these 150 bottles is a bit of an understatement. That puts The Wine and Cheese Place on par with New Zealand and Hong Kong for our annual allocation of Faiveley Musigny. This wine is rarely for sale in the US and as with all of our wines comes directly from the nationally appointed importer Frederick Wildman, no Grey Market wines for us as that is too risky. Faiveley Musigny doesn't come cheap but it doesn't come around too often either, but we are happy to offer a chance to buy one of the worlds rarest and most collectible wines $500 cheaper than anyone else in the United States (only one other retailer shows this wine for sale)



2013 Domaine Faiveley Musigny Grand Cru....$3,499.99 / bottle
Only 1 bottle made it to Missouri
Comes in its own sealed wood box
Producer note: Erwan Faiveley and Bernard Hervet describe 2013 as a "difficult vintage that contrary to what one might have easily expected produced some really lovely and classic wines. The growing season was very challenging, especially in the Côte de Beaune but even in the Côte de Nuits it was no cakewalk. We began picking in the Côte de Beaune on the 26th of September and in the Côte de Nuits on the 30th. Sorting was highly variable with some parcels requiring quite a bit and some almost none at all though as a very general statement there was more in the Côte de Beaune. We did use some whole clusters in our vinifications though none for our wines in Gevrey as we were afraid of off odors that have been common there over the past 10 years or so. Quantities were not generous but at least we had slightly better yields than we realized in 2012. As to wine quality the whites are good to very good but the reds are excellent." While it's no surprise given the hail problems I found the quality of the Faiveley wines from the Côte de Nuits to be markedly more interesting than their Côte de Beaune efforts.
Tasting note: A very pungent nose displays plenty of wood and menthol influences on the quite firmly reduced aromas. There is superb richness and intensity to the seductively textured mineral-inflected flavors that are at once powerful yet refined before culminating a very backward, concentrated and stunningly long finish that just goes on and on. This is exceptionally promising and should also live for decades. In a word, brilliant.

Rated 95-98/100 Allen Meadows, Burghound

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