Burgundy: The Grape Beyond Part 2

This is an article I originally wrote for the Austin Chronicle. I place it here for your information and as a teaser for when this blog gets going full time, which will be shortly after the edits and art for my next book, What's a Wine Lover To Do? (Artisan), are finally finished.

Chablis was our starting point, an area planted almost totally in Chardonnay. These wines, like all Burgundies, are food wines. There's plenty of acid to cleanse your palate when you have it with a meal but probably too much acid to sit around sipping it on a hot Texas afternoon. The people of Chablis set four classifications of their own. Petit Chablis is the least of the wines, followed by Chablis, Chablis 1er Cru, and Grand Cru at the top. Of all the Burgundians, they are probably the biggest proponents of terroir. Decades ago, some wine-born pathogen settled in their oak barrels, and the winemakers burned every barrel in the area and installed stainless-steel tanks. Today, almost all Chablis is made without oak, so when you taste a glass of Chablis, you are tasting nothing but grape, terroir, and the winemaker's art.

I know about terroir but was still surprised when I tasted 10 different Chablis, all from one maker, La Chablisienne. All had the wonderful wet slate aroma common to Chablis, but all were completely different. The wines ranged from overly acidic and thin at the Petit Chablis end to magnificent, well-structured richness at the Grand Cru level. Another winemaker, Clotilde Davenne, was my pick of the best winemaker in Chablis. Even her simplest wines, Bourgogne Blanc, had depth and opulence. She also has one of the few vineyards in Chablis that is allowed to grow Sauvignon Blanc, called Les Temps Perdue Saint-Bris. It's elegant and restrained with the aromas hitting you as an afterthought. We were smitten.

The Mâconnais area is around the town of Mâcon. This is where most of the least-expensive Bourgogne wines come from, but it's also where most of the affordable action is these days. It has long been the bastard stepchild of the better areas, but things are changing. The Bret brothers (pictured above with friend and fello wwine writer Leslie Sbrocco), owners of Domaine de la Soufrandière, had a bumper crop, qualitywise, in 2006. Their hand-tended, organic vineyards are producing fruit as good as any in Burgundy, and the brothers are young enough to make a difference in the Mâconnais for many years to come.

Knowledgeable French wine lovers have been scarfing up the wines of the Côte Chalonnaise district for years, because the prices are low compared to the Côte d'Or. The Château de Chamirey showed some incredible 2005 wines that haven't yet hit the U.S. market. The U.S. will only get 25 cases of their Mercurey 1er Cru "Les Ruelles," but it's worth trying to finagle a bottle any way possible. This is quintessential Pinot Noir. A bit easier to find, if more expensive, is the Château de Perdrix Nuit Saint George Premier Cru "Aux Perdrix."

Once we move to the Côte d'Or, the négociants take control of the marketplace. While there are dozens of good négociants, two I trust are Louis Jadot and Joseph Drouhin.

We spent most of an evening with Jadot's winemaker Jacques Lardière as he took us through their barrel room, blithely tasting wine that will retail at anywhere from $9 to $900. I tasted 11 different wines that I would give my highest possible score, and luckily, two will be less than $25 when they hit stores over the next year. The 2006 Pernand Vergelesses Blanc will give you a good idea of what their $200 white Burgundies taste like, and it's under $20. And the 2006 Fixin similarly gives a strong hint of what the $400 Pinot Noirs taste like, and Lardière says it should come in around $25. At the end of the evening, Lardière wanted to show us how long his wines last, so he poured us a 1971 Pommard Rugiens and a 1961 Bonnes Mares. Both were still youthful, brightly colored wines with amazing complexity. These wines really do live a long time.

Drouhin wants to get young people interested in their brand by offering affordable wines. That way, as their taste and wallets mature, they'll be Drouhin fans and go for the higher priced wines. Their starter wine – the $20 2006 Veró Pinot Noir – is a perfect example of a simple Bourgogne level wine, but they have flexed their winemaking muscles to make something dazzling for the price. I'd pick it over a lot of $100-plus Burgundies.

Not all Côte d'Or wine is made by négociants. Winemaker Laurent Pon­sot operates the winery named for his family. He is a tall, thin man with a long gray ponytail (see above), an ex-mountain climber who took a big fall so now gets his fun flying acrobatic planes. And making wine. He is another of the terroir-as-religion folks. "The wine must be a vector between the earth and your glass," he says, as we sip some of his 2006 Morey-St.-Denis Premier Cru Clos des Monts Luisants Vieilles Vignes Blanc, a rare wine made from the Aligote grape. "I am not a winemaker. I am a conductor." The French have a way of tossing these grand statements like we might say our address. My favorite Ponsot quote: "A bottle is too big for one, and a magnum is too small for two."

Burgundy: The Grape Beyond

This is an article I originally wrote for the Austin Chronicle. I place it here for your information and as a teaser for when this blog gets going full time, which will be shortly after the edits and art for my next book, What's a Wine Lover To Do? (Artisan), are finally finished.

Recently, I had the chance to visit a number of French and Italian wineries, mostly hoping to find some new wineries to tell you about but also to try the new vintages before they hit the U.S. shelves. That way I could give you a heads-up. I know: tough work.

For the French part of the trip, we based ourselves in the town of Beaune, the epicenter of the Burgundy wine trade. People in Burgundy are both knowledgeable and opinionated about their food. Ask two people on the street who makes the best jambon persillé or the best fresh goat cheese, and you'll get four different but equally passionate responses. And wine is the most argued-about of all the foods.

Unfortunately for us, no wine area in the world is as inscrutable as Burgundy, mostly because of its labyrinthine classification. I'll try to make it at least basically understandable.

The first thing you have to know about Burgundy is that there are three main grapes grown there. If a Burgundy wine is white, nine times out of 10 it will be a Chardonnay. If it is red, unless it is a Beaujolais, it will be Pinot Noir. Why don't they just say Chardonnay or Pinot Noir? Those nutty French people take terroir (an all-encompassing word meaning dirt, weather, slope, and anything else that can define a single place) as religion. They think where the wine comes from and who makes it are more important than what grape they use.

The next thing to know is there are a number of huge wineries that purchase grapes or juice, then make the wine and market it. These are called négociants. All négociants try to buy the best grapes they can, and many vineyard owners will sell grapes to several négociants to keep the bidding fierce. But that's confusing because you might see several companies producing a wine with the same name.

Here's how Burgundies are labeled:

Grand Cru is the designation for the top wines in Burgundy. We see only a handful of Grand Cru wines in Austin because of their rarity. They are punishingly expensive, frequently north of $300 a bottle and occasionally more than $1,000. These wines are always listed by the name of the place, like Clos de Vougeot, Montrachet, or Chambertin.

Premier Cru (look for "1er Cru" on the bottle) is the next-highest designation. There are more than 500 Premier Cru vineyards. No one living in Beaune can even name them all. Some of the Premier Cru wines can be priced as highly as the Grand Cru. But with a little skill and help, you can frequently find great bargains in this category.

Village wines can be made from any number of vineyards within a village's boundaries. This is where you find wines named after towns. Of course, if you've never traveled Burgundy on a bicycle, it's hard to tell a town from a vineyard. What's worse, years ago, several towns added the name of a Grand Cru vineyard to the name of the town. Puligny became Puligny-Montrachet, and Aloxe became Aloxe-Corton.

The lowest designation we see in the U.S. is simply called Bourgogne. These wines can be made from anywhere in Burgundy, and increasingly we are seeing them marketed here as Bourgogne Pinot Noir or Bourgogne Chardonnay. Bourgogne wines can also be named after a place. Like Macon-Villages. Which leads us to the last snag in labeling.

Burgundy comprises six areas: Beaujolais, Chablis, Mâconnais, Côte Chalonnaise, Côtes de Beaune, and Côtes de Nuits. Moreover, those last two are referred to collectively as the Côte d'Or.

Finally, you should know that there is no apparent connection between price and quality in Burgundian wines. There are négociants – like Jadot and Drouhin – where you can trust most of what they make to be good value for the money. But once you get into the smaller wineries, all bets are off. The best strategy is to talk to a trusted wineshop person, then try some of the least expensive wines. When you find one you like, start moving up that maker's ladder.