It's... complicated

Beaunejour!

Greetings from Burgundy, where harvest is well into its second week, although today is my first day. By the time you get this I will have already been up for a few hours and probably jabbed myself a few times with something sharp. Few things can get me up before sunrise like early morning flights and regret harvest.

Fun fact: Apparently, if you cut yourself and don’t have any disinfectant on hand, just squeeze the juice of some tiny, underdeveloped grapes into the cut. It’ll clean and seal the wound. Zing!

All morning jokes aside, joining a harvest in Burgundy with people I respect who are doing cool things has been a goal of mine since I started studying wine. It’s a reminder to just do the thing and not self-select out. I will primarily be helping William Kelley and hopefully also Tomoko Kuriyama and Guillaume Bott, the duo behind micro-négoce Chanterêves.

One lesson I’ve learned before even starting is to allocate more time to help with harvest, not just a week.

Another is given how much planning and coordination is involved, a lot remains up in the air. Working with nature is a reminder that ultimately it’s not up to you, which also makes it an excellent opportunity to practice my theme this year: surrender.

A third is the importance of being decisive. You have to know what you want and be ready to act with imperfect information. Time—and grapes—waits for no one, indecision is also a decision, and it usually doesn’t end well. I’m sure many more lessons will come.

That said, the level of planning I’ve witnessed for both harvest and meals is indeed impressive—and that’s saying something as someone who is compulsive about planning by Google doc. Pre-booking bottles along with table reservations never crossed my mind until now but it just goes to show there is always someone worse (better?) than you!

Today, I will talk about Burgundy (surpreese!). Specifically, a few reasons why it is such a freaking complicated region plus practical examples of how to interpret wine labels.

If you’re new here, welcome! Join us, we’re a fun bunch:

Don’t forget you can check out my other posts and follow me on Instagram @thirdplacewine, and LinkedIn, too.

Today’s post is brought to you by… Write of Passage

The next in the series of free workshops, “How to Start Writing Online” is happening tomorrow, Tuesday at 10:00 EST. This one is all about getting unstuck—we’ve all been there whether in your job, lifestyle, or creativity. Writing online is a powerful way to open new doors and opportunities. More info and to Register.

The third and final free workshop to pencil in is “Write of Passage Test Drive” on 21 September at 14:00 EST. WOP is like a meal at a Michelin star restaurant. Although everyone’s raving about the quality of the restaurant, words can only do so much. At some point, you need to taste the food to get the full experience yourself. More info and to Register.

P.S. Registration for Cohort 11 opens tomorrow at 9:00 EST. Secure your spot. Questions? Reply to this email.

Turning terroir to 11

I’m going to make the assumption that you’ve heard the term “terroir” before and that you—as many of us have—rolled your eyes when you first heard it, brushing it off as a French invention exemplifying yet another way in which they are better than the rest of us, this time with a fancier word for “dirt”. But as you learn and drink more, you come to understand terroir really is a thing and its spiritual home is in Burgundy where the concept is taken to its extreme, infinitesimal degree. Burgundy after all is a region built at the parcel level. As a result, it has more appellations (84) than any other French wine region.

Why?

To begin to try to understand, we first have to consider three factors that have influenced the development of the Burgundian appellation system: history, geology and the law.

Historically

Quick recap: the Romans brought wine to France.

But in Burgundy, it was the church that was responsible for its expansion and setting the stage for the structure of the appellation system there today. That’s because in the 5th century CE, it filled the power vacuum left by the fall of Rome. During the Dark Ages, the promulgation of monks and monasteries led to the expansion of vineyards to produce wine for mass.

Interestingly, the monks only worked with a few varieties, among which were Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir express themselves differently based on where they are grown, in a way they are kind of “neutral” or “transparent”.

The monks that worked the land noticed that the wine tasted different from one piece of land to the next. Although they didn’t understand why, they documented the differences in quality and classified the plots accordingly. Perhaps had the monks worked with less neutral grapes, Burgundy’s classification and appellation systems might have evolved differently.

Geologically

What the monks observed but didn’t know was that they were actually farming vineyards across a fractured landscape with a patchwork of soils that had been shuffled around during the last continental upheaval.

This upheaval created the Côte d’Or escarpment and eight fault lines running through it. Soil-wise when this happened, chronological layers of deposited sediments shifted, eroded and accumulated in different places, creating a mosaic of sorts.

To add to the mosaic are other topographical features which influence the quality or expression of a grape. Features such as elevation, slope location, aspect, a soil’s water retention or drainage. Each variety also has a soil preference: Pinot Noir likes limestone/high limestone content, Chardonnay likes marl.

Considering the various permutations of each of these factors both within and among parcels, it’s not hard to see how the earth and environment would reflect myriad expressions in the final wines—and that’s before we even consider human intervention.

Legally

To complicate things further, we have the legal system. Under Napoleonic law, the Code of Inheritance dictated that estates were to be divided equally among children.

In Burgundy, this was interpreted literally and so vineyards were divided by rows and those divisions compounded over generations to the point where many holdings became commercially unfeasible. This also explains why a single parcel or vineyard can be farmed by many owners.

Over time, Burgundy evolved a tradition of négociants who would buy fruit from different growers to bottle under a single label. “Négoces” also make wine from their own consolidated holdings, and remain pillars in Burgundy winemaking today. You may recognize some of their names: Drouhin, Jadot, Latour, Faively, Bouchard.

If you take by comparison Bordeaux, which had centuries of international wine trade under its belt by the time the code came into force, the savvier Bordelais interpreted the code by dividing their estates as paper shares of stock and not rows of vines. This helped them to maintain the integrity and size of their holdings—one factor which has contributed to it being a relatively less complicated region. (Bordeaux also has négociants but their role is more as a broker between châteaux and the market.)

To recap: we have the monks’ historical record documenting the differences across sites (which have since been further refined and consolidated), the actual geological differences as supporting evidence of what the monks observed, and the interpretation of the law in a way that led to further fragmentation. These three compounding factors make Burgundy the most intricate and complex wine region to understand not only in France but arguably the world.

How to read a wine label

Let’s look at a practical example of how you would encounter this in your daily life. You’re at a wine shop and you see this:

If you’re not familiar with Burgundy, it looks like Clos de Vougeot needs to fire its marketing department.

What’s really going on is Clos de Vougeot (AKA “Clos Vougeot”) is a Grand Cru vineyard and not a domaine (producer). Each of those bottles are made by different domaines which own and farm a part of Clos Vougeot (you can see the full current list of domaines working Clos Vougeot here).

While it’s a pretty good probability that the wine won’t be terrible coming from such a vineyard, you still need to know the producer. In Burgundy it is especially important to know the producer not only because of style and personal preference, but also because some producers ride the reputation of a vineyard, knowing that the wine will sell regardless of if they are diligent in their farming and winemaking choices. You may be way over paying for a wine in a region that is already among the most expensive in France (and the world)—Burgundy represents only 4.5% of French wine production but 21% of its revenues among still wines.

To understand the label, we first need to start with an overview of Burgundy’s classification system of controlled appellations (“Appellation d’Origine Controlée”, or AOC):

First, all of Burgundy’s wines are at the top of the French wine quality pyramid—they are all AOCs (no IGPs or Vins de France here).

Second, unlike Bordeaux, which classifies by château (producer), Burgundy classifies by parcel. Because terroir.

Unclassified vineyards all have names that respect their terroirs. So just because a vineyard is named on the label doesn’t necessarily mean the wine is good, it’s just describing where the grapes come from.

Good vineyards are given Premier Cru status (can also be seen written as “1er Cru”).

Great vineyards are given Grand Cru status.

The quality pyramid above goes from broader zones of production (Regional) to more specific plots of dirt (Premiers and Grands Crus). An example of a regional AOC would be Bourgogne AOC which means that grapes can come from anywhere in Burgundy. An example of a Grand Cru would be Clos Vougeot (to use the previous example). The grapes for that wine could only come from the Clos Vougeot vineyard.

The AOCs also regulate a number of other requirements such as variety used, whether or not you can irrigate and yield, among other things, but for our purposes today we will just keep the discussion to where the grapes can come from.

Returning to reading labels, here are examples from each level of the pyramid and how you can understand what you are looking at and therefore buying:

Regional

Regional wines can be made from grapes grown anywhere within Burgundy or from a specific area within Burgundy (known as “dénominations géographiques complémentaires” or DGC). A few of the regional AOCs also refer to specific styles of wine (e.g. Crémant de Bourgogne) but we’ll leave that and DGCs out for now. All you really need to know is that when a label says “Appellation [Region] Contrôlée”, it’s a regional wine that is supposed to demonstrate typicity from that region. In this example, this wine should taste like it’s from Burgundy.

Village

Village level wines are made from grapes sourced within a village in Burgundy. In the above label, it’s clear that it’s a village wine because the village name (Mercurey) is prominent, although the label should say “Appellation [Village] Contrôlée” (as in the example below). Like regional wines, village wines are often blends from different sites within the village and are supposed to demonstrate typicity from… that village.

Sometimes, village wines will be made from a single site or lieu-dit, a parcel indicated by cadastral unit (lieux-dits differ from climats, see “Premier Cru” section below). In that case you will see the name of the vineyard on the label, as in the example above (La Framboisière). You’ll also notice the word “monopole”, which indicates that Faiveley owns 100% of the vineyard. Therefore, I wouldn’t expect to see anyone else claim that their wine is made with grapes from La Framboisière.

Premier Cru

Premier Cru wines come from a single vineyard that is classified as a Premier Cru. The name of the village plus the words “Premier Cru” or “1er Cru” appear on the label along with the vineyard: “Appellation [Village] Premier Cru/1er Cru Contrôlée” + Vineyard. It’s not required to say that the vineyard is a Premier Cru, but most people do.

If there is no vineyard named on the label, that means the wine was made from grapes sourced from different Premiers Crus within the same village.

Because the village name appears on the label with the Premier Cru, Premiers Crus are incorporated into the Village AOC category as separate climats (a parcel associated with territory classed as Premier Cru or Grand Cru) and not as separate or individual AOCs. That’s why there are not 662 Premier Cru AOCs.

Grand Cru

Grand Cru wines only have the name of the Grand Cru vineyard plus the words “Grand Cru”. It’s kind of like, “no intro required”. IYKYK.

Unlike Premiers Crus, each Grand Cru is its own AOC. Because terroir.

On the label you could see it written “Appellation [Grand Cru] Contrôlée” or reshuffled as in the example above: “[Grand Cru] Grand Cru Appellation Contrôlée”.

One exception is for Chablis, where the village of Chablis is always listed with the Grand Cru vineyard name. Each of the Grands Crus of Chablis are also their own respective AOC, even though “Chablis” appears on the label.

Clear as mud!

In conclusion, Burgundy is super complicated and a great example of how history, geology and the law have come together to shape what we ultimately taste in the glass. It’s a fun region to discover, and you can spend a lifetime doing so.

Be wary of lazy producers riding on the good name of well-classed vineyard sites. Similarly, be open to some of the lower level wines, a great producer can do wonders and is a real gem. These gems make the treasure hunt worthwhile. Now that you know the basics to begin to understand what is in a bottle, it’s time to start exploring!

 If you enjoyed this, consider subscribing and sharing with a friend!