Domaine Joseph Faiveley 2014 Mazis Chambertin Grand Cru Full Bottle Review

Hello everyone, Trophy100. Today I'm doing a review of Domaine Favely 2014 Mazzei Shabertong Grand Cru. Really excited to bring you a review of this wine. I purchased six bottles of this wine quite a while back. This is my last bottle. I have drank this over the years with many people, but never been able to sit down and really drink it. This wasn't supposed to be a full bottle review but ended up it was. What happened is I drank it at dinner and it was just so good. I just kept drinking it and drinking and drinking and it turned into a full bottle review. Typically my full bottle reviews are over a number of tastings. It was basically over one night and I had to save some tonight for this review. Why I like to do full bottle reviews and what's the difference between a full bottle review to me and just a tasting? Wines change and evolve over time and when you're drinking a full bottle by yourself over time you get to see the whole fluctuation of that bottle. It's a much different experience than if you're just taking a glass or a sip or at a wine festival spitting out. It's a whole different experience when I get to try it with food, when I've aired it over a number of hours. Typically with a full bottle review I would have tasted three or four different occasions over two or three days. In this situation I'm only tasting it twice because the bottle was so delicious. But I do have previous experience with this wine and have always loved it with fairly consistent notes. Firstly let's look at the winery. It's Domaine Favely. The winery was founded in 1825 in the New East St George region by Pierre Favely. It was his son Joseph that gave his name to the family business so that's why it's called Domaine Joseph Favely. And now we're in the seventh generation and it's now owned by Erwin and Eve Favely and it is one of the largest owners of land in Burgundy managing about 137 hectares in Côte de Nuit and Côte Chalanaise. Favely I think is a very very good producer slash negotiant and sometimes people don't give credit to these big negotiants like Jadot, like Bichot, like Champy and like Favely. But as you see prices in Burgundy rising these become more and more important because they have so much land they have so many different plots of vineyard sites and they have such expansion or such scope. And this is very important in Burgundy especially in bad years where you may not have as much grapes. I had the pleasure about a year and a half ago of drinking with the winemaker Jerome Fou and it was very educational for me. He took me through the wines and I really had a newfound understanding of Favely wines. In the past I had always thought they were kind of a little bit more entry level but I didn't understand they had a whole gambit of wineries including these Grand Cru vineyard sites. And I will say that I do believe that over the years the wines have got better and better and especially in today's market where almost every Burgundy is very very expensive particularly at the premier Grand Cru level. Domains like Favely are very very good accessible Burgundy. It's because they have large quantities you can find them they have a lot of scope in terms of their labels and in general the quality of most of the wines is quite good. Let's talk a little bit about the vineyard site. So it's called Mezzy Chaberton and sometimes it's also spelled M-A-Z-Y which is easier to pronounce Mezzy Chaberton. I used to pronounce it Meziz Chaberton which is not correct. In French the S is silent and the I is sometimes like an E. So Mezzy Chaberton is I believe the correct pronunciation of this region. It's named after the Mezzy which is the small houses that were on them on the site and is the northernmost Grand Cru vineyard in Côte du Nuit sub-region. This region is planted entirely of Pinot Noir which makes red wines. The vineyard site Mezzy Chaberton is divided into two climates. There's the upper which is called Les Mezzi Haut and then there's the lower called Les Mezzi Bas and with the lower having slightly deeper soils. All of these wineries or vineyard sites are in the upper part of Mezzy Chaberton and that is technically the good part. Basically the upper and lower are divided by a road and with Mezzy Chaberton the upper has a little bit more shallow chalkier soils. You think that deeper soils are better but in fact for Pinot Noir shallow low nutrient soils are better because with too rich a soil the vines don't really have to work that hard. So it's kind of against your logical thinking. You're thinking oh beautiful vineyards with very rich soil that must make the best wines. In fact that's the opposite. It's the vineyard sites that look almost like barren and have very little nutrients which generally speaking produce better wines because the roots have to really struggle to get nutrients and that actually produces a more intense or more complex flavors in the grapes. The higher part of Mezzy Chaberton where these vineyard sites are located also have thin limestone soils. The climate is kind of a continental climate and it's got a southeastern slope which is generally the best because the sun comes from the south and so you'll get more sun and more heat and that allows grapes with heat and dry soil and with good drainage to achieve maximum ripeness. Let's talk in particular about Domaine Flavoy's site in Mezzy Chaberton. They have about 1.56 hectare site and the vines are planted between 1930 and 1945 as well as another planting in 1959, 1974 and 2007. Then the wines are aged 16 to 18 months in French oak barrels. 60 percent are new and 40 percent are second fill barrels which gives that toastiness. In general Mezzy Chaberton is a little bit more intense and more structure, more tannic than most Gèvres Chaberton sites. They prepare wines from Chambord-Maussigny compared to Gèvres Chaberton. I find personally that Chambord-Maussigny has a little bit more tannic structure and a little bit more darker fruits. Gèvres Chaberton sometimes can be very acidic and cherry-like, too tart for my taste but that's me personally. What I love about Mezzy Chaberton is it doesn't have that as much acidity and does not have that tanginess or tartness. It has a little bit more rounder fruit in my opinion. Let's discuss the 2014 vintage in Burgundy. It was generally a very good vintage for white wines because they had a relatively cool summer, reasonably early harvest but not a lot of extreme weather. It was decent and it delivered some very nice white wines and also with a lot of very pleasing red wines. I would say it's not the best vintage, a classic vintage for red wine but a very decent vintage. Different vintages, they're not good or bad, they're not off and on, they are more what type of drinking style. For 2014, this is what I would consider a fairly early drinking vintage and so we're now at 2026. I think it's drinking very nicely right now. As compared to some classic vintages, they might need 15-20 years with a Grand Cru site. Just going back to a little bit of beginner background about Burgundy, Burgundy is divided into kind of four hierarchical layers in terms of the best sites. They start off with the regional which is you'll see that a lot of labels just Bourgogne wines. Then they go to the village wines. In this case, it would be Gervais-Chebreton and it would just say Gervais-Chebreton on the bottle. Then you go to Premier Cru sites and then this would be a Grand Cru site, Mezzi-Chebreton. What that means is that this is supposed to be the best sites as decided based on historical surveying and experience. The people have decided these are the best sites for growing of Burgundy wines and that denotes in general the quality. Now, each winery also has variations but in general, a Grand Cru site or Grand Cru wine is going to be better in the opinion of wine experts than a Premier Cru site. Generally speaking, Grand Cru wines are going to be the most expensive and the next more expensive is going to be Premier Cru. Now, there are obvious exceptions to this rule but that's a general rule of thumb. When you see a Grand Cru site like Mezzi-Chebreton, this is generally pretty top quality stuff and generally very ageable. It's not going to be drinking right away. You need some age on this and generally fairly expensive. Let's look at the label. I always find you can learn a lot from the label. Let's start off with the name of the The region is Mezzi-Chebreton and it is a Grand Cru site. The vintage is 2014 and then there's production you'll see in French. I'm not sure exactly what it is in French but it says I think the full production was 6259 bottles and this is which is consistent around 500 cases each year and then this was bottle number 4380 and then this is fairly standard. That means it was bottled at the winery. Let's look at the whack of the label to see if it's got any information for us. Not too much information. The only thing I can see that it is 13 percent although you don't feel it is a low alcohol wine. Let's see the color of the wine. So it does look a little bit brown if you see the rim. It's not bright red even when you have it like this. It's got a almost a brownish garnet red to it so that does denote a little bit of aging on this. It is 12 years old so I wouldn't say it's past its prime but you can see there is good aging on this which is supported by my tasting which shows that it is kind of in its drinking window at this point. I had this last night at dinner with a classic pairing which is duck and goose and it really does bring out the gaminess of the duck and the goose and you don't need a lot of sauce on duck and goose. This almost becomes the sauce. It's almost like a plum sauce or you know a little bit of minerality so I really enjoyed that. I just like the duck and the goose without any sauce just roasted and that's it and then with the wine that's to me just a magnificent pairing and I almost went through the whole bottle just drinking that. This is a very aromatic wine. While I've been talking I can smell it right away and it was very aromatic out of the bottle also. So on the nose I get strawberries, black cherries, floral components like roses and violets. The color is also very intense for a Burgundy wine. It does have some age. It's now 12 years old but showing a lot of vibrancy still. On the taste, firstly there is good tannin structure on this and generally one of the things with Pinots is they're seen to be very light but when you get to the Grand Cru level the tannin structure is very good. The body is about medium and a lot of Pinot Noir Burgundies are light body especially in the range but as you get higher up into the Grand Cru you get to medium, medium plus. I don't think really full body. It's not like a Cabernet Sauvignon like from Napa Valley but a fairly heavy body. There's a lot of secondary and tertiary development already in this wine so you do get your dark fruits. Not as like fresh fruits but more like dried berries like dried cherries, a little bit of strawberry, black plums but also you get a lot of development with you feel the vanilla and the oak influence on this wine. You get a bit of gaminess and then a little bit of minerality and earthiness on the aftertaste. You also get almost the licoricey black tea scent on this. One of the complaints that people have when they drink Valley Burgundy and or else they pay for Burgundy and it's very expensive is that oh it's so tart, it's so acidic. When you get to Grand Cru level you it kind of loses that and there's really no acidic parts of this. It's much more earthy, aloamy, mushroomy also in the taste. So lots of secondary and tertiary development already in this wine. I really love this wine. I've had this many times, always enjoyed it. This is I think a very very good example of what Messier Chaberton can do. I've also had not as good examples of Messier Chaberton which I think are a little bit thinner and not as balanced. This is a very balanced, very drinkable wine. I wouldn't say it's like super stunning in terms of it doesn't knock your socks off in that way but all I know is when I'm having it with goose and duck somehow I drank almost the whole bottle and it became a full bottle review. So very nice wine. Always enjoyed this wine. My rating of this is 95 points. I think it will continue to go very well. I think it's probably at its peak right now but will continue at this peak easily for the next 10 years. There's no rush to drink this wine. Having said that it is tasting very nice right now. There's really no need to wait for this wine. It's really quite magnificent. If you do enjoy my videos please subscribe to my YouTube channel Trophy Wine Hunter or to my Instagram account. Hope you enjoyed this video. Until next time, happy drinking.