2018 Faiveley Mercurey 1er Cru Le Clos des Myglands Half Bottle 375ml, Burgundy

The 2018 Mercurey 1er Cru Clos des Myglands is one of the most charming, immediate wines in the range this year, delivering notes of dark berries, red plums, baking chocolate and spices. Medium to full-bodied, supple and expansive, it's open and velvety, with lively acids and a nicely defined finish.

As I wrote last year, the Faiveley family first produced wine from rented vines in Mercurey in 1933, finally beginning to acquire land there three decades later. Today, with over 72 hectares to their name, they number equally among the Côte Chalonnaise's most important landholders and its qualitative reference points, so I'm happy to resume coverage of their wines in these pages. Unsurprisingly, the style bears a certain resemblance with the contemporary Faiveley style as expounded in the Côte d'Or: that's to say, pure and precise wines that no longer display any trace of structural asperity for which the house was once known and often carry a judicious veneer of new oak in their youth. The Faiveley reds and whites from Mercurey, Montagny and Rully are more immediately accessible and see less new wood, but they play off the same themes and rank among the region's finest. What's more, the domaine's significant holdings mean that many of these bottlings are unusually accessible by Burgundian standards.

91 points William Kelley robertparker.com Jun 2020