It's no exaggeration to say that Burgundy produces some of the most expensive and indeed rarest wines in the world, but what makes this land so special?
With 84 total appellations and hundreds of different vineyards, its sometimes difficult to know exactly where to find the best wines.
Fascinatingly, the regions large number of appellations and the patchwork of vineyards are due to Napoleonic laws of inheritance.
Prior to Napoleon, there were the Laws of Primogeniture
Where the eldest son received everything.
Well now, under Napoleon, he says that everyone, all the children must be treated equally.
So all of a sudden you have this family, for example, that owns 1/14 of the Clos de Vugeot and they have three children.
Well guess what, they're 1/14 of the Clos de Vugeot is divided by three, when the parents die.
And those people have children.
And so that gets divided.
And that gets divided.
So, today you have cases where someone will own a vine or three vines.
Or half a row, and they can be a pharmacist in Paris, they can have a book store in Lyon.
They get a cheque from the family winery every year.
Its not only a patch work of vineyards, its a patchwork of ownership.
Whilst the ownership of land in Burgundy is often complicated and different appellations and vineyards can be confusing, the quality ranking system of any wine in the region is fixed.
Burgundy is divided into a hierarchy.
The French love hierarchy's.
To understand the hierarchy of Burgundy you kind of have to imagine a pyramid.
And the bottom 80% of the pyramid is what they call the regional wines.
Then you have 12% which are considered to be village wines.
So the labels will say Beaune or Chablis. Then you have the Premier Cru,
the first growths, that makes up 7%.
The very, very top of your pyramid you have 1%.
and you have the tiny tip of the pyramid, and those are the Grand Cru.
Grand Cru's don't carry the name of their village.
They only carry the name of the vineyard.
The bottle will say Le Montrachet
Or it will say 'Clos De Vougeot'
And those are the very tip of the pyramid.
And those are the grape growths of Burgundy.
When it comes to quality there are just 4 classifications to remember.
The hierarchy begins with the regional wines.
often referred to as Bourgogne Rouge or Blanc.
Wines at this levels usually come from the regions unclassified vineyards.
Next, is what's known as Village wines.
You'll find the name of the village from where the wine comes
such as Volnay or Pommard on the label
These wines can deliver some excellent value for money,
particularly as the most prestigious produces will occasionally down classify their wines from premier cru to village if they are not 100% satisfied with the quality that year.
This means that sometimes a wine will say village on the label
but the liquid inside the bottle will be from a higher classification.
Stepping up a gear, we have a Premier and Grand Cru of Burgundy.
Which are made from the best vineyards in the region.
Premier Cru wines are from the superior vineyards and will always state premier Cru on the bottle
But can fall into two category's either generic or specific.
Generic Premier Cru wines only state the general appellation on the label
and are usually from a blend of different premier cru vineyards within an appellation
For example, Beaune Premier Cru or Mercury Premier Cru
Specific Premier Cru wines on the other hand, come from a single Premier Cru vineyard
and will say both the appellation and the vineyard on their label
great examples are Savingy-Les-Beaune Premier Cru Les Serpentieres
and also Chablis Premier Cru Vaillons
Finally, the top 1%
and crème de la crème of the Burgundy pyramid are the Grand Cru wines
With only 33 vineyards boasting this ranking across the whole Burgundy region
At this level, wines will always be from a single vineyard
and may even come from just a few rows of vines within that vineyard
Some of the most notable Grand Cru's in Burgundy are
Chevaliers-Montrachet , Romanee Conti and Clos De Vougeot
But its not just the location and ranking system of Burgundy wines that determines their quality,
as the year or the vintage in which a wine is produced also matters.
The wine maker will have a large influence on quality
Although, not all wine making philosophes are the same
How would you describe your wine making philosophy?
After many, many years of being a professional lush
The lesson learned is that there shouldn't be any wine making
You should put yourself in a position where the wine makes itself
and that means that your work is done in the vineyard
and at ... that's what we try to do.
we try to have the vineyards
be farmed in such a way
that we ripen, that we ripen fully, we harvest when the fruit tastes good
and then we take those grapes
we sort them, we have three sorting tables with 10 sorters on each table
and we go cluster by cluster, berry by berry
to only keep the very best
we then de-stem
and then we get out of the way, that's what we try to do.
Although Burgundy's quality pyramid is a great way to get a good idea of the prestige of a wine.
Its important to know your producers as well
to find the best wines possible, no matter what the ranking.