2016 Maison Joseph Drouhin Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru
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Tasting notes
The 2016 Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru offers plenty of brambly red fruit on the nose, interlaced with cold tea and scorched earth aromas. Fine delineation here. The palate is medium-bodied and flirts with over-ripeness on the kirsch infused opening, though reins everything in towards the finish with an attractive saline aftertaste. Good potential. Tasted blind at the 2016 Burgfest tasting.
Critic scores
Average Score
Neal Martin
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous
More reviews and scores
Tasted from bottle, the 2016 Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru is showing well, though this blend of seven premiers crus was impacted by the frost, making for an unusually concentrated wine that will require more bottle age to attain its plenitude than most recent renditions. Offering up aromas of raspberries, cherries, dried flowers and citrus rind, it's medium to full-bodied, ample and fleshy, with a broad, richly textured attack, satiny but abundant structuring tannins and juicy acids, concluding with a long finish where the wine's structure finally asserts itself in the form of gentle back-end grip. It's an excellent Chambolle that numbers among the comparative sleepers of the 2016 vintage.
(from a very small crop; vinified with 30% whole clusters): Good medium red. Shows a bit more oaky sweetness on the nose than the preceding village wines, along with slightly medicinal aromas of raspberry and smoke. At once deeper and more elegant on the palate, showing a positive medicinal reserve to its flavors of red and darker berries, licorice and spices. With more obvious tannins, the back end is a bit youthfully clenched.
About the producer
Joseph Drouhin is one of the largest and most famous producers in Burgundy, making both domaine and négociant wines. It remains family-owned and run, now in the hands of the fourth generation.