Frédéric Magnien (Burgundy)

Frederic Magnien Morey-Saint-Denis, Burgundy.
We met (and tasted the wines of) Frédéric Magnien in the Grand Tasting 2007 which gathered dozens of the best winemakers in the basement of the Louvre (the next one is this weekend). I can't find my notes but we were impressed by the serious work and quality of his wines. Our tasting at his small stand was a milestone of this wine-tasting event. Frédéric Magnien is the fifth generation of a vigneron family, and he has a dual activity : he is a vigneron for the Domaine Michel Magnien (his father) and he developped a Négoce activity to fully experience his vintner's job, as buying grapes allows him to vinify many more Appellations than if he counted only with the family-owned vineyards. Frédéric Magnien makes quite a lot of small-volume cuvées, with a preference for the Cotes-de-Nuits, from vineyards that he could work on, thanks to an arrangement with the owners. He also makes Chablis even if he considers it is only for the intellectual sport, the distance from his Morey facility making it a not very profitable venture (3 hours to commute there, including for his workers). Also, he buys the Chablis grapes according to the quantity of wine that he will make, meaning that he virtually buys the wine in bulk there in spite of the fact that he also pays for the harvest costs, the vinification and elevage, but the Chablis growers sell their grapes at rates of "wine in bulk", and as wine in bulk costs about the same price than bottled wine in Chablis these days, he is obviously disadvantaged in terms of price margin potential.
His favorite spare-time activity is to discover the Cotes-de-Nuits region to select the available purchased grapes there, finding interesting terroirs along his ramblings. Frédéric Magnien's workaholic ways can be measured in his very wide range of cuvées : no less than 40 to 45 different cuvées every year, each offering a distinctive terroir expression.

A vigneron and négociant, Frédéric Magnien makes dozens of cuvées every year He says that the Chablis region is very interesting because of its great terroirs, more interesting than the Cotes-de-Beaune, at least closer to what people like to drink in the good restaurants nowadays. The restaurants don't serve brioche-styled wines today, the brioched- and hazelnut wines are not anymore fashionable and people ask for purity, elegance ant aromatic precision, which is exactly what Chablis can offer, even if the Cotes-de-Beaune has also such terroirs. That's why Puligny is high on the charts today (hard to find available purchased grapes there), it's because its terroir is rocky and gives a very precise wine. Frédéric Magnien says that he has to adapt to economic parameters, like for example this year in 2008 he didn't make any Chablis because the grapes costs skyrocketed there. Otherwise the other years he had bought the grapes of an equivalent of 3,5 hectares, Chablis old vines, Chablis Montmains, Vaillons, Montée-de-Tonnerre, Valmur and les Clos.
He wants to make more qualitative cuvées, wines that are closely connected to their terroir. That's why since 2008, 30% of the purchased grapes (all the 1st Crus and one third of Grands Crus) are organicly farmed thanks to a parnertship with the vignerons : he remains a négociant and didn't make the step to rent the vineyards but he proposes them vineyard-management services AND his vinification services. At the end, with the qualitative leap that he gave to the wine, he pays the vignerons a good price per kilogram compared to the bulk rates.One of the 6 cask rooms at Frédéric MagnienAs said above, Frédéric Magnien has every year some 40 to 45 cuvées of Burgundy wines, but to this, you must add the 22 cuvées made in the family winery Domaine Michel Magnien. The size of each cuvée for the négoce part for example stretches between 2 casks and 30 casks. Some years he could go up to 120 casks for Cotes-de-Nuits Villages because the Appellation offers one of the best quality/price ratio in Burgundy. He also tried the Hautes-Cotes-de-Nuits but this is exactly the opposite, it is not at all what he looks for, these wines there having always excessive acidity. When he looks for a vineyard, he never knows what will be available. He knows what he likes but his wishes are not always fulfilled by the vigneron, because either of no availability or price bracket. He says that like in any job, it's a question of energy, for example he knows that the right surface size for himself is about 50 hectares, so he looks for the equivalent of this surface. He understands that some people feel content with 5 hectares but he needs more to use his energy. He works with people who share this energetic approach for example in the vineyard-management company that he set up, he took as associate a former tacheron (independant worker performing tasks for growers) who is samely a hard-working individual and manages the vineyard tasks on 44 hectares with his aides. Frédéric Magnien knows that if he settles one day a long partnership with several estates, he can count of this guy fo managing the work on up to 50 hectares.Tasting in one of the cask roomsWhen I ask about the added difficulty of 50 hectares being stretched on so many plots, he shrugs off the inconvenient, saying that he has always worked this way and feels comfortable this way. He knows how to handle the work with his 70 vats, with which he will make 65 cuvées. For the Bourgogne Rouge, the Cotes-de-Nuits Villages, he will have some 3 vats with the same Appellation, each gathering different origins and soils, and he will blend accordingly for a Cotes-de-Nuits Villages "Coeur de Roche" or a Cotes-de-Nuits Villages "Croix Violette". Even these Villages cuvées are vinified separately depending of their respective terroir, either on slope or alluvial/debris cone. He attributes the extremely-fragmented nature of the Burgundian terroir to the fact that it was planted in tiny plots, with a vegetal material that is very different when young and brings different results that are difficult to blend, and it needs different vinifications. You don't vinify a clone, say a 115 like a massal selection which has 100% of Mirandage. That's how he built his branded cuvées (Coeur de Roche, Coeur de Fer, Coeur d'Argile, Coeur de Pierre), based on the distinctive terroir which translates into totally different wines depending of the rocky-, ferrous-, clayish or stony terroir. You don't blend wines from such diffrent terroirs, the clayish vineyards will make a very angular wine with cold, hard tannins, while a very-stony soil will yield a very supple and refined wine, with elegance and rounded tannins. So you never blend such a silky wine with something angular that would tear open the silk. As we listen to him, a worker walks in each of the cask rooms to top up all the casks [pic on left] to compensate with the evaporation of the wine through the wood (and our modest tasting).Still photography in the cask cellarFrédéric Magnien considers that he owes much of his situation to his father Michel : his father always let him work as he liked, change the vinification procedures as he liked, and their working relations were always smooth, which is not always the case in the families of vignerons. One of the first things that he initiated, as his father sold only generic Gevrey-Chambertin, Chambolle-Musigny and Morey-Saint-Denis, was to make separate cuvées, like in the Morey-Saint-Denis (right-click on the map to zoom in), he made a separate cuvée with several of its distinctive terroirs and climats : the Tres-Girard terroir, sitting on a geological fault below Clos Sorbé, the Monts-Luisants, above the slope and very different on a sandy terroir topping the rock table, plus Clos Solon and Bas Chenevery which are on stones and rolled blocks of stones. He vinified each of these distinctive terroirs very differently and until today he doesn't blend the resulting wines because their expression has to stay distinct. With the exception of special years like 2004, these wines are better off on their own. At a time, his father blended a Chambolle Fremières, which is a Villages Appellation, with a Chambolle Sentiers which is a 1er Cru. His Chambolle Villages was an excellent one but he still blended 3 casks of Chambolle 1er Cru with 6 casks of Chambolle Fremières which was a bit generous (the buyers made a very good deal then).Pouring from a bottleIn his mind, all the wines should be vinified in order to optimize the organoleptic qualities of their respective terroir, and in this regard they must be kept separate. He is more interested in this selection and valorization of terroirs than in the purely commercial aspect of his job. For example he noticed that Chambolle Musigny (right-click on map to zoom in), in spite of being branded as the most feminine wine of the Côte, you still can come accross Chambolle-Musigny wines that are more tannic than others, depending of the climat and when you taste a "les Condemennes" or a "Aux Beaux Bruns" you have totally different types of Chambolles.
When is looks for a vineyard, he takes into account the vineyard looks, the vinestock, the apparent quality of the pruning and vineyard management, the vigor and age of the plot. Of course, he is at ease with the intertwined climats (in the Cotes-de-Nuits at least) and can walk in the vineyards and know without a detailed vineyard-map (like Charlotte Fromont's book) to which micro-Appellation a given plot belongs and even to name the owner...Wine-thief pourFrédéric Magnien also spent time in foreign wineries several years ago. Asked about his experience when he travelled abroad to work in wineries in California and Australia, he says that it gave him the envy to fully make this job. In California he worked at Calera, a winery in Hollister, between Santa Cruz and Monterrey. Its founder, Josh Jenson, himself learned how to grow grapes and make wine in Burgundy in the early 70s' at Domaine Dujac where he befriended Jacques Seysses. The personnalized license plate of this Californian Pinot-Noir lover was Mr Pinot... In Australia he stayed at Bannockburn, where the winemaker was Gary Farr. This was not one of this huge Australian wineries, it was maybe a 30-hectare estate, very close in size from a French property, where Shiraz, Pinot, Chardonnay and Riesling was grown. For the story, he was travelling through Australia when the engine of his campervan failed, which led him to knock at the door of Gary Farr at the winery around the corner...What striked him during these trips abroad was that he fully realized that if France had a huge advance on the New World, it was just because on the terroir beneath our feet, otherwise they had a decisive superiority in terms of technical expertise, hygiene and vinification control over there, but they didn't have the historic advantage of a terroir molded by centuries of interaction between man, the vines and the soil. With their best enological knowledge and inspired decisions they still had a hard time making exciting wines like the ones of the best Burgundy terroirs for example. His foreign experiences made him realize that in Burgundy they had much progress to make and that they used only maybe 50% of the potential of what the Burgundy wines could offer.Cleaning of a cask after a rackingWe now taste several of Frédéric Magnien 2007 wines, either from a bottle or from the casks where they complete their elevage. The picture above illustrates the cleaning of a just-emptied cask with an automatized robot riddling the inside of the cask with high-pressured water. This purple color is caused by the tartar being milled away.
__Frédéric Magnien, Bourgogne, Pinot Noir 2007. Bottle, no label. Nice intensity in the nose. He says his wines are based on maturity, he doesn't like wines that are too acidic. 2007 is the type of millesime that he likes in this regard. 2003 was his preferred, the result of this atypical year on his wine turned to be really good. It has been often said that 2003 wines would not last long but sommeliers begin to have second thoughts because as time passes they are very stable year after year. For him, the 2003 reds will be like the 1947, that is a milestone millesime in spite of very uncertain beginnings. In 1947, many vignerons hurriedly sold their wine in bulk to get rid of what they thought would be a problematic wine. The 2006 wine is sold 9,95 Euro.
__Frédéric Magnien, Chambolle-Musigny Old-Vines 2007 (winethief-blend from two casks, a new cask and a one-year old). Nice deep nose, some gaz. The wine has not finished its elevage, he says, and it will be marqued by its elevage durung one year after bottling. He noticed that with older vines, the wine gets austere and tight in its youth. Very nice, classy mouth. The new-cask wine was racked into this cask after it completed its malolactic fermentation. This wine will be blended in a vat next month and bottled january/february 2009. He takes into account the lunar cycles for the racking and bottling, and it is even more important because he doesn't use additives like gums or fining agents. He doesn't need additives because he doesn't look for pre-formated wines. What he really looks for is a different expression for each cuvée. The 2006 wine is sold 27 Euro.
__Frédéric Magnien, Chambolle Musigny "les Baudes" 2007. A climat under Bonnes-Mares, very rocky soil. Marked tannins. Here the terroir brought this rugged side, this proves that Chambolles aren't always these feminine wines they're always advertized to be.
__Frédéric Magnien, Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru les Cazetiers 2007. On the slope. 5 casks of this wine. Very nice, depth and concentration. Malo-ferm finished last september. Only wild, indigenous yeasts and bacteria for his fermentation. He says that for Chablis wines, the philosophy is different and the winemakers uses the same external yeasts in a given vathouse to best differenciate the different terroirs betweem themselves. Density, earthy notes, says B. He uses only François-Frères casks to avoid having cooperage differences meddle in the wine styles. The wood for these casks (fine- & very-fine grained) comes from the Allier forests and dried 3 years in the open air, and the staves got a medium toast. He prefers to use the same containers so that the cask factor will not add another parameter in his small-batch cuvées. He had never to face a bad-tasting cask until now. The 2005 wine was at 45 Euro.
__Frédéric Magnien, Bonnes-Mares Grand Cru 2007. Very nice aromatic depth. Very nice mouth too, onctuous. Nice structure, says B, with chocolate, tobacco and jammy fruits aromas. We both love this one. Comes from a 1,8-hectare vineyard on Morey-Saint-Denis along Clos de Tart. He says that the soil is clear there (terres blanches, in French. The 2006 wine is sold 98 Euro.Frédéric Magnien26 Route NationaleMorey-Saint-Denis 21200phone : +33 3 80 58 54 20fax : +33 3 80 51 84 34frederic-magnien.comListen to the Graperadio interview (mp3) of F. Magnien