Frédéric Magnien is a long standing favorite for top tier Burgundy at SommSelect. He makes a stunning amount of different terroirs and crus at his eponymous négociant business, but one my all time favorite wines for sheer complexity and value is the “humble” Bourgogne Rouge “Graviers.” Humble is in quotation marks because this wine is made from a single vineyard that abuts Chambolle-Musigny, and I’d be willing to bet that most sommeliers would blind it as a Premier Cru Chambolle or Morey-Saint-Denis. Beautifully perfumed, deep, complex, and sumptuously textured so you can enjoy it right now, but also structured for a nice sleep in the cellar, this really is a tremendous value in old-school Pinot Noir that is dripping with class. As such, I recommend loading up with as much as you can.
If you drink a lot of Burgundy, you’ve probably heard the term “micro-négociant.” We use it a lot, especially when we’re offering wine from Frédéric Magnien. Négociants are “merchant-bottlers,” meaning they purchase fruit (or juice, or even finished wine) from individual growers and then bottle it under their names. Micro-négociants do the same thing, but in a much more hands-on, collaborative way—with results that are readily evident in the glass. Frédéric only purchases fruit, and his team harvests all the bunches from every vineyard he contracts with.
It may seem a subtle distinction, but treating vine-growers as partners rather than contractors pays measurable dividends. Magnien only works with growers who are certified organic (or in the process of conversion), and, having grown up riding his bicycle through the vineyards of Morey-Saint-Denis, he knows every inch of the Burgundy terroir. So, even at the entry level, he has a little something special for you: “Graviers” is a single vineyard near Chambolle-Musigny’s border with Morey-Saint-Denis, at the base of the slope topped by Grand Cru Bonnes-Mares. Rich in clay and, as its name suggests, gravel, it delivers lush, perfumed, old-vine Pinot Noir for this well-priced 2022. You may think of ‘Bourgogne’ as a more “macro” kind of wine, but Magnien proves otherwise: This is serious, site-specific stuff!
“Fred” Magnien founded his maison in Morey-Saint-Denis in 1995, following an extended period of travel to other great wine regions of the world. The roster of wines now produced under the Magnien label is extremely long and diverse, stretching the length of the Côte d’Or and reaching up into Chablis as well. All the wines display the kind of precision that comes from careful, hands-on fruit sourcing, and there’s no doubt that Magnien considers himself a vigneron first and a winemaker second. He has his own teams carry out harvests in the vineyards he works with, all of which he carefully selects and closely monitors throughout the growing season. Magnien’s parcel in the Les Graviers vineyard contains vines averaging 40 years of age—quite impressive for a Bourgogne Rouge bottling!
The fruit for today’s succulent 2022 was hand-harvested and fermented on ambient yeasts in temperature-controlled stainless steel tanks, after which it was aged in a combination of clay amphora, clay egg fermenters, and neutral French oak barrels. The soils in Graviers are richer in clay, lending the wine a generous texture and somewhat softer tannins. In the glass, it’s a deep, reflective ruby moving to magenta and pink at the rim, with a fruity, floral nose of cherry kirsch, red and black raspberry, wild strawberry, damp violets, tea leaves, underbrush, and crushed stones. It is medium-bodied, plush, and fresh, all about fruit and earth with just the slightest kiss of spice on the finish. Decant it about 30 minutes before serving at 55-60 degrees in Burgundy stems and you’ve got yourself a perfumed, beautifully pure ‘go-to’ bottle for the next several years (if you stock up, that is). In classic red Burgundy fashion, this bottle will bridge the fish/meat divide effortlessly; try it with the attached cedar-planked salmon preparation and celebrate another great “get” from SommSelect.
