Thomas Cottrell is Bellevue Club’s contributing wine columnist and the owner of La Cantina Wine Merchants.
As a certified wino, I am a member of three different monthly tasting groups. Two of these gangs are eclectic in their taste, and tackle wines from around the world on a regular basis. The other assemblage rarely wanders far from the topic that’s
engendered its name: the Burgundy Boys. Once a month we gather to taste wines from that region, mostly the reds. These tastings invariably bring to mind the places where the grapes have been grown. They are pleasing memories, but not the same as actually being there. I’ve been fortunate enough to visit the Burgundy region more than a dozen times in my professional career, but it’s been many years since I was last there. A few weeks ago I returned, along with the Burgundy Boys. I’d forgotten just how much I’d missed it. One of the things I was immediately reminded of was the sheer beauty of the place. The land is gentle and green with rolling hills on one side, a river valley on the other. It’s an agricultural Mecca for wine nuts and foodies alike.
The finest vineyards lie on a pair of hillsides called the Côte d’Or, roughly translated as the “Slope of Gold,” a reference to the quality of the wines and, more recently, to their cost as well. It’s a region that’s some 30 miles long and only about three miles wide, running roughly northeast to southwest. As you drive south on the busy little road that starts in Dijon—yes, the mustard place—and connects all the famous wine villages one to another, the fabulously expensive vineyards rise up to your right (west). The rows of vines are aligned to maximize exposure to the sun morning and afternoon. The names of the wine towns tell the story of the renowned wines they
Meursault
produce. First comes Gevrey-Chambertin, perhaps the most famous of them all. Then Vosne-Romanée, a personal favorite, Chambolle-Musigny, Nuits-St.-Georges and the others, and soon you’re in Beaune, the center of the wine trade (and the third most-visited place in France). Continuing south you hit two more red wine villages, Pommard and Volnay. Then come the white wine towns: Meursault and Chassagne- and Puligny-Montrachet. Are you thirsty yet? With the exceptions of Nuits-St.-Georges and Beaune, all these villages are tiny, quiet little places, with narrow roads wandering through them and on up into the meticulously tended fields of grapes. Anonymous walled houses, white, gray and beige, are built side by side right up to the edge of the vineyards. And at the center of each, you’ll find a tall-steepled church overlooking the central place.
Clos de Vougeot
The villages are just to the right of the road as you travel south. The vineyards next to them are very good, but not the best. Those, the Premier Crus and the even finer Grand Crus are usually higher up the hill, where the slope is a bit steeper, the soil better, the angle to the sun more favorable. But higher up still, where the slope is steeper yet, the wines are not quite as good. In fact, they stop altogether near the top of the hill, where forest takes over. A look at a good vineyard map confirms what the eye sees—there’s a sweet spot about halfway up the slope where the finest grapes grow. The vineyards have been famous for nearly a thousand years, each with its own name: Clos de Vougeot, Echézeaux, Romanee-Conti and all the rest that make Burgundy so sought-after, so expensive. As if to confirm the fact, the vineyards to the left, east of the road, are on the flat. They are entitled to only the simplest title: Bourgogne (or, as we English speakers have corrupted it, Burgundy). The grapes? For hundreds of years they’ve been the same, with very few, unimportant exceptions. The reds are 100 percent pinot noir, the whites 100 percent chardonnay.
But in this special spot, with its northern climate, they produce wines unlike anywhere else in the world. The whites are supple, sometimes rich, always a bit creamy, yet with a racy acidity to keep them fresh and beautifully balanced. The fruit flavors are applelike rather than tropical, and only touched with oak rather than dominated by the stuff. The reds are elegant, sometimes delicate, sometimes rich. Texture is everything, ranging from silky to velvety. The flavors run the gamut of red fruits—cherries, raspberries, plums—and sometimes all three at once. Add in some sweet oak, spice, an earthy note that occasionally edges into barnyard and there you have it—red Burgundy. Beautiful wines from a beautiful corner of the world.
