Jacques Frederic Mugnier

The history of the Domaine begins in the 1880s with Frédéric Mugnier’s great-great-grandfather Francois who went by the name of Frédéric. He was born in 1826, and at the age of thirty, he established a very successful company based in Dijon that produced aperitifs, absinthes, cassis, liqueurs and aromatized wine.

Marcel, the grandfather of the current Frédéric, purchased his sisters’ shares in the domaine. His brothers died fairly young, and though they were all bachelors, they had mistresses to whom they left their shares. After Marcel’s death, his wife and son, Jacques-Frédéric, managed to purchase the shares back from all the mistresses but one. At her death, the vineyards were split up, 40% ending up sold, for the most part to Drouhin. This left Jacques-Frédéric as the sole heir of an estate; the size, with the exception of 43 acres of Clos Vougeot, has not changed since. Jacques-Frédéric was born in 1923. He trained as a lawyer, but became a banker. He was not a fan of the Dijon milieu. He sold the Mugnier aperitif company to l’Héritier-Guyot, leased the vineyards to Faiveley, and in 1950, he left Burgundy to pursue a banking career in Saudi Arabia. The vineyards were leased to Faiveley for successive nine-year terms. The lease was renewed three times until 1977, when Jacques-Frédéric decided to take the vineyards back, but French law tends to side with the renter, and agricultural leases are extremely difficult not to renew. Jacques-Frédéric had no choice but to negotiate. In exchange for the return of the vineyards in Chambolle, he agreed to a 25-year lease on the Clos de la Maréchale and abandoned his 43-acres parcel of Clos Vougeot to Faiveley. He hired Bernard Clair (Bruno’s father) as manager. Wines were once again made at the domaine, but they were sold nearly in their entirety to négociants, mainly to Jadot. In 1980, Jacques-Frédéric passed away, leaving his widow to continue running the estate from afar under the management of Bernard Clair.

In 2004, Faiveley’s lease of the Clos de la Maréchale ended. The size of Domaine Mugnier more than tripled overnight, from 4 to 14 hectares. Because the wines of Nuits Saint Georges hardly sell with the ease of the wines of Chambolle Musigny, it was a gamble. Frédéric went full steam ahead, built a new cuverie under the courtyard of the chateau and went from two part-time vineyards workers, to seven full-time employees, plus seasonal staff. He estimates that from 2004 on, the amount of time spent on each vine has tripled.