Domaine Dujac Chambolle-Musigny Premier Cru Les Gruenchers 2012

95 VMVinous, Antonio Galloni, 01-04-2015

The 2012 Chambolle-Musigny Les Gruenchers is suave and silky on the palate, with real textural richness and intensity, two of the signatures of the year. Dark red cherries, violets, plums and lavender meld together in a complex, nuanced wine built on depth and pure voluptuousness. This is a magnificent showing from Dujac. I expect the 2012 will provide readers with a long and broad drinking window of pure pleasure.

Drink 2023 to 2043

90-92 WAWine Advocate, Neal Martin, 30-12-2013

The 2012 Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru Les Gruenchers comes from a small 0.32-hectare parcel of vines planted after the war. It has a gorgeous bouquet with an intermingling of red and black fruit, minerals, hints of seaweed emerging with time. The palate is medium-bodied with firm, almost obdurate tannins. This feels like a more masculine Chambolle, structured and perhaps even introspective towards the spice-tinged finish. Good persistency in the mouth, fine matiere here, it should develop more charm once in bottle. Tasting in the cellars of Domaine Dujac in Morey Saint Denis is always an educational, enlightening experience, granting you a useful picture of how some of the top vineyards performed in the Cote de Nuits during a given year. Alec Seysses was on hand to guide me around his particularly cold cellar, one of those occasions when my warm hands might be bad for pastry, but ideal for warming glasses. “It was the fourth poor year in a row in terms of quantity,” he explained, showing me the concrete eggs now employed at the domaine, a less common sight here in Burgundy compared to Bordeaux. “although in 2012 we had a regular crop of the village crus and the younger vines did well. We averaged around 20 hectoliters per hectare. Everything was racked in early September but there is some reduction from the cold cellar. The softness of the tannins strikes me as a character of the vintage. It is more a dark fruit vintage than a red fruit vintage. Sugars were between 12.5 and 13%, with a few 13.3% here and there. I find the wines similar to 2010, but the 2012 is a little more charming because the tannins are not quite as strong.” Tasting through the complete range of wines from the small batch of negociant wines under “Dujac Fils et Pere” to the clutch of grand crus, it was clear that propitious terroirs that influenced the wines greatly. The village crus were mostly commendable in their own right, but the real excitement begins as you broach the premier crus, where the barrel samples achieve high degrees of complexity and nuance. Like many of the top growers, I was pleased to see individual terroirs articulated with great clarity in 2012, perhaps more so than the 2011s. These barrel samples seemed to contain so much energy: tightly coiled springs of fermented grape juice, brimming with tension and freshness that Jeremy and Alec will endeavor to capture once in bottle. I have little doubt that they will succeed.