Two Faces of One Slope

The justification for this comparison is written into the hillside itself. Musigny’s 10.86 hectares are divided among many owners in wildly unequal shares: Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier farms 1.14 hectares of it, while Domaine G. Roumier holds a single parcel of 996 square metres — cadastral plot 44, up at the northern top of the vineyard, farmed by the family from the 1920s and finally purchased in 1978. Roumier’s plot sits directly above Mugnier’s vines. Two bottles, same year, same slope, one above the other: about 350–400 bottles a year from Roumier’s scrap of land — a barrel and a half — against Mugnier’s still-modest production. The tasting designs itself.

The people behind the labels are half the story. Frédéric Mugnier was a petroleum engineer on offshore rigs in Saudi Arabia before coming home to the family’s Château de Chambolle-Musigny in 1985, at thirty, to make his first vintage — and he kept flying commercial aircraft part-time until 2000 while running the domaine. Chemicals left his vineyards step by step: last fertilizer 1986, last herbicide 1990, last insecticide 1995. Roumier, founded 1924, is in its third generation under Christophe Roumier, and its Musigny is the rarest wine in a cellar full of rare wines.

The Vintage That Was Rescued

2007 began with the warmest April in fifty years, then spent the entire summer cold, wet and sunless — until a warm late August and a dry, cool September with a rot-suppressing north wind turned catastrophe into charm. What survived is a vintage of florals, transparent red fruit and fresh acidity rather than weight, with the Côte de Nuits ahead of the pack. At nineteen years, both wines were bright, clear ruby — light in saturation, nothing tired.

The Mugnier layered red and black cherry under rose and cocoa, with an iron-tinged earthiness, smoke and orange peel below, oak staying in the frame. The palate had a firm, sappy core that gained tension as it went — fine-milled tannin, long balance.

The Roumier opened on rose petal, vivid and immediate, picking up a faint green-sepal herbal note with air. Its acidity ran higher but sat locked inside the structure; the texture was silk over mineral, the finish drawn long and precise.

Side by Side

What they shared was 2007 itself — transparency, flowers, structure without weight. Where they parted: Mugnier spoke from below, in earth, iron and smoke and the density of its core; Roumier spoke from above, in petals, texture and the precision of its acid line. No ranking survived the evening, nor deserved to. Two expressions of one slope, upper and lower, saying different things in the same dialect.

Both are fully open now. The Roumier’s structure suggests it could hold well into the 2040s; the Mugnier gives pleasure now with room to spare. A difficult summer, two patient houses, and nineteen years of waiting — the arithmetic came out in everyone’s favour.