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For the serious connoisseur, Burgundy is perhaps the most famous and revered wine region in the world, though it only accounts for 5% of the land area of France's AOC vineyards. Despite the tiny size of the region, it has a quarter of the country's appellations (99 classified wines) giving great complexity for both the palate and the brain!
How do you navigate your way through a region with such a profusion of varied appellations - the one-hectare of La Romanée produces only a few hundred bottles a year, while other appellations cover an entire wine-growing district? For a newcomer to Burgundy, the system of appellation is perhaps the hardest aspect to get a handle on, and the labelling of Burgundy reflects this complexity and difficulty for the beginner. We'll tackle the subject of labels a little later, but first let's take a look at the system of appellation itself.
Burgundy is unique in France as the only appellation that has only a single varietal for red (Pinot Noir) and for white (Chardonnay). In fact, the Burgundians do have the right to add a small percentage of other varietals, but in practice the wines are essentialy monocepage. Burgundian weather can be quite extreme, with severe winters, heavy frosts and frequent thunderstorms with devastating hail during the summer. However, the northern latitude provides for long evenings in the ripening season, which allows the grapes to reach a full physiological maturity by the time of the late September harvest.
As in the other calssified regions of France irrigation is not allowed but there is ample rainfall for the vines, which in the best years will hold off until after the harvest.
We run many tours in Burgundy throughout the year. Some are custom, and others have set itineraries. Read on for information on the various parts of Burgundy that you'll be visiting!
The classifications of Burgundy are made up of 33 Grand Cru appellations, 55 communal (village) appellations, and 28 regional appellations. In addition to this, 562 sites are given "Premier Cru" status which constitute a special class of village vineyards which add their own name to that of their village. The first official classification of the wines the Côte-d'Or department was drawn up in 1861 by Dr. Jules Lavalle of the Beaune Committee of Agriculture.
Lavalle divided the wines into five categories : "tête de cuvée", 1st class, 2nd class, 3rd class, and regional. This classification remained until 1935, when the Institut National des Appellations d'Origine (INAO) developed the system which we use today. This classification takes account of both the traditional local hierarchy and of other natural factors such as geology, land-form and soil type.
The Cote d'Or's AOC wines are found on the slopes rising from the flat valley floor of the Saone river. The vineyards rise up the eastern-facing hills until they usually meet the trees which separate them from the less prestigious "Hautes Cotes". If you look at a map of the Cote d'Or you'll see that the Grand Cru andPremier Cru vineyards are situated pretty much along the middle part of the slopes, sometimes reaching up to the trees, but often giving way to some village appellations at these higher elevations.
The label tells the story of the heirachy of the vineyard. As in Bordeaux, the smaller the defined area is, the higher the quality. In other words, as the quality goes up, so the wine is required to reflect a stricter style, which corresponds to a smaller area and of course less wine produced. Hence, as well as paying for quality, the consumer is inevitably paying for rarity.
The problem for the Burgundy drinker is that the vines in a particular vineyard are not all owned by one person. Unlike Bordeaux, where one chateau (historically owned by one wealthy landowner) owns the entirety of a label's "vineyard", here in Burgundy the plots have been divided between children, merged by marriage, and bought or leased from the old, infirm or uninterested. Hence, a single vineyard can have many different owners, all producing their own style of wine from their own part or parts of the vineyard. Obviously, there is a huge potential for variation, and despite the supposed controls of the Appellation Controle anyone who has bought a few bottles of Burgundy knows that there can be huge differences in quality, as well as style, within a single vineyard.
So how do you go about figuring out who is who and what is what? It is, unfortunately, not at all simple. Read good critics, get to know your favorite producers, talk to your friends and taste as much as you can! Also, more these days that ever, be ready to revise your judgement on a producer - or indeed on a vineyard. The system of classification, although based on sound principles as outlined above, is by no means infallible, and you will find from time to time a producer who has taken a lowly village plot and produced a single-vineyard village wine that stands up to many a Premier Cru. This even extends to the "lesser" vineyards of the Hautes Cotes, where these days there is a growing number of hard-working, inventive and adventurous winemakers who are managing their vineyards well enough to make that proverbial silk purse out of a sow's ear (though a sow's ear is a pretty unfair description here in the first place!)
This page created by and copyright of S. Peter Smith, Avalon Tours, 1996-2003