Wine region
Burgundy
Burgundy: about 28,700 hectares, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, Climats as a UNESCO site and the ladder of regional, village, premier cru and grand cru.
- Vineyard area
- about 28,700 hectares and 84 appellations
- Main grapes
- Chardonnay (about 57 per cent), Pinot Noir (about 34 per cent), Aligoté (about 6 per cent); Gamay in the south
- Climate and soils
- temperate with continental influence; limestone and marl on slopes between 200 and 500 metres
- Signature wines
- Chablis, Gevrey-Chambertin, Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, Pouilly-Fuissé
- Landmark
- Clos de Vougeot: about 50 hectares, walled by Cistercian monks, now with more than 70 owners
Burgundy stretches across eastern France from Chablis in the north to the Mâconnais in the south. With about 28,700 hectares of vines it is small beside Bordeaux but very varied: 84 appellations on slopes between 200 and 500 metres, in a temperate climate that is semi-continental in the north and already touched by the Mediterranean in the south. Its heart is the Côte d’Or, a narrow ribbon of hills south of Dijon, divided into the Côte de Nuits, home of the great reds, and the Côte de Beaune, where the great whites grow as well. Chablis, the Côte Chalonnaise and the Mâconnais complete the picture.
Here place counts for more than grape. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are the two noble varieties; Chardonnay covers about 57 per cent of the vineyard, Pinot Noir about 34 per cent and Aligoté about 6 per cent. Further south, in the Mâconnais and in Beaujolais, Gamay takes over from Pinot Noir. In the Middle Ages Cistercian monks noticed that neighbouring plots give lasting differences in the wine; from this came the Climats, named plots that were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2015. Napoleonic inheritance law later carved estates into ever smaller pieces, so many growers share a single climat; the Clos de Vougeot, about 50 hectares, has more than 70 owners.
The hierarchy is simple and strict: the more precise the origin, the higher the rank. At the bottom is regional Bourgogne, above it the village appellations such as Gevrey-Chambertin or Meursault, then the premiers crus, specific plots within a village, and at the top the 33 grands crus, which carry only the name of their climat, such as Chambertin, Romanée-Conti or Montrachet. Altogether there are 84 appellations: 7 regional, 44 village and 33 grand cru. In Chablis, far to the north, Chardonnay on limestone soils full of fossil oyster shells gives taut, mineral wines; Chablis has seven grand cru climats on a single slope.
Red Burgundy is rather pale, with aromas of cherry, raspberry, forest floor and spice, fine tannins and fresh acidity; white Burgundy ranges from the lemony freshness of Chablis to the fullness of a Meursault. At table the local dishes lead: boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin, snails, époisses and gougères. Pinot Noir is also Switzerland’s most planted grape, from Valais to the Bündner Herrschaft and Schaffhausen. Anyone who drinks Burgundy therefore has a yardstick for the Pinot Noirs closer to home.