That which many think of as Burgundy is the Côte d'Or, a 30-some-odd-mile long strip lying southeast of Paris in east-central France not far from the Swiss border. It's more useful, however, to extend the concept to include Chablis to the north and the Mâcon and Beaujolais regions which lie southward extending nearly to the northern suburbs of Lyon. Throughout all of Burgundy, white wines are produced virtually exclusively from Chardonnay; reds are Pinot Noir unless from Beaujolais, in which case the grape is Gamay.   More

That which many think of as Burgundy is the Côte d'Or, a 30-some-odd-mile long strip lying southeast of Paris in east-central France not far from the Swiss border. It's more useful, however, to extend the concept to include Chablis to the north and the Mâcon and Beaujolais regions which lie southward extending nearly to the northern suburbs of Lyon. Throughout all of Burgundy, white wines are produced virtually exclusively from Chardonnay; reds are Pinot Noir unless from Beaujolais, in which case the grape is Gamay.

Burgundy today, particularly in the Côte d'Or, is an admittedly confusing patchwork of small, individually-named vineyard plots spread out over a couple dozen villages along its length. To further confuse matters, within each vineyard there can be multiple owners, with Jean-Michel owning 10 rows here and Christophe owning 20 rows over there. Anthony Hanson explains well the origins of this highly parcellated system of land tenure: it "dates from the French Revolution," when, "after the suppression of religious orders and the flight or guillotining of the nobility, their lands were declared national assets and sold," largely to an emerging middle and merchant class.

The official government wine bureaucracy, the INAO, classifies each delimited vineyard plot as belonging to one of several quality tiers which are, in ascending order, Bourgogne, villages, premier cru, and grand cru. It is critical to remember here that this hierarchy refers to the innate potential of the geographic site itself, i.e., the piece of land. So a wine vinified with skill from a premier cru vineyard by a conscientious grower can be, and often is, better than one issuing from a grand cru site that was sloppily made from carelessly tended vines.

White Burgundies can range from clean, well-balanced, unoaked Chardonnay from around Mâcon in the south to supremely elegant wines combining opulence and tension; these latter wines, when produced from a clutch of grand cru vineyards such as Le Montrachet can fetch hundreds of dollars a bottle. Likewise with reds, quality varies from simple, pleasant Beaujolais to the most majestic reds on the planet, wines packing an enormous aromatic and flavor wallop in a light, almost ephemeral package.   Less