Domaine Jacques-Frédéric Mugnier

The Mugnier saga began with Frédéric Mugnier, born in 1826. This successful distiller, who owned a liquor store in Dijon, bought the Château de Chambolle-Musigny and its vineyard in 1863. During the 1880s, the phylloxera crisis drastically lowered the value of many Burgundy vineyards, so Frédéric took the opportunity to buy his second one: the Clos de la Maréchale. In total, he now possessed 24 hectares of vineyard.

After his death in 1911, his son Ernest temporarily took the helm of the estate, but he died a few years afterwards, in 1924. His seven children inherited the entire property, although one of them (called Marcel) managed to buy all of his siblings' shares. He then proceeded to give them to his only son Jacques-Frédéric, who de facto became the sole proprietor of the Mugnier estate and its vineyards.

Unfortunately, the financial crisis forced Frédéric's grandson to sell the family-owned liquor business and all the grape vines, which were leased to the Faiveley family during the 1950s. Ultimately, the trained lawyer left France to pursue a banking career in Saudi Arabia. When he came back to France in 1977, Jacques-Frédéric succeeded in getting some of his assets back, but he died shortly after.

His son Frédéric, born in 1955, finished his engineer studies and also left for Saudi Arabia, where he had found a job in the oil industry. Nostalgia got a hold of him, though, and he returned to France in 1985. The same year, he started training as a oenologist in Beaune and he recovered ownership of the Clos de la Maréchale. He now had 14 hectares of grape vines, which he decided to take care of.

Frédéric has a scientific approach to the vineyard. He doesn't produce organic wines, but he doesn't use any chemical pesticides or herbicides either. His wines are simply the purest they can be, which is rather impressive. Frédéric wants to erase the winemaker from the winemaking process, to let the terroir express itself instead.

Discover the wines made by Frédéric Mugnier.