Wine Education

Our recent voyage to France took us through the Cote d’Or or “golden slope” of Burgundy as it’s known and then on to Northern and Southern Rhone.  Traveling in our little Citron stick shift auto from the Cote de Nuits to the Cote de Beaune evoked a sense of deep of history of the region, the monks of over a millennium ago laying the foundation for today’s industry and an awe for the sacred terroir and the hard working vintners that produce Burgundies against which all others are compared.

The Cote d'Or is divided into two separate and very different wine producing regions: the Cote de Nuits in the north and the Cote de Beaune in the south.  The Cote de Nuits, unequivocally, produces the finest red Burgundies on the planet.  No sooner do you depart Dijon than you magically enter an agricultural wonderland with a history of winemaking that spans over a millennium.  If there’s anything that distinguishes this region from all others, it has to be its terroir, specifically, the soil, a mix of limestone and marl that sets the stage for the finest Pinot Noir in the world.  For sake of ease, let’s define “terroir” as all those physical and environmental elements that impact the vines, the grapes and the wines.  This includes the soil, its exposure to sun, its elevation and slope, the water table, and of course, the climate.   What you may not appreciate is the series of slopes, geologic faults and rifts that determine the structure and depth of soil components that derive from the Jurassic and Triassic period.  For example, the Saone fault zone represents a distinct break between two very different geologic profiles.  On the upslope is the weathered Jurassic limestone and marl, those soils that nourish the Pinot Noir grape.  On the down slope, in the valley, the soils are more clay and sand.  As the water table in the valley is rather high, the vine’s roots are easily saturated and can yield reds are that are less powerful and concentrated compared to their brethren.  It’s this geology that often answers the question: “how can one vineyard’s wines display one expression while another only a short distance removed offers another?” In addition, elemental nutrients and efficient cation exchange play a key in the structure of the wines, with phosphorus thought to have a profound influence upon the taste of the wine.

Another key component of “terroir” is the climate.  Burgundy lies at the latitude of the US-Canadian border so sunlight becomes very valuable as the season wears on.  The climate is a blend of and sometimes a battle between maritime and continental.  The result is a climate that, on average, it not too warm nor too cold but there are seasons when the winter can be long and cold and the summer hot and humid.  This 2010 growing season started off with a very cloudy, rainy and cool spring followed by intense heat with temperatures in the 90’s and high humidity recently.  Annual rainfall runs around 28 inches, just enough for grapevines.  Fortunately, the fractures in the bedrock associated with faults, helps to conserve water.   In years of drought, vineyard managers must make adjustments as irrigation is not allowed.  On the other side, an overly rainy spring can interfere with adequate flowering and fertilization, resulting in tiny and uneven sized grapes (coulure).  Such occurrences can result in a poor harvest and little wine.  As well, a very wet harvest can swell the grapes and dilute the juices.  Hail is always a monumental risk in the region, especially during the first half of the summer.  One violent storm can strip the canopy of leaves and damage or destroy grapes and vines reducing the valued crop.   While Burgundy sports over 500 appellations and a complex maze of vineyard ownership (some vineyards have 50-100 individual owners, each having a claim to select rows or even sections of rows, all the result of an ancient system), the hallowed wines derive from only one of two grapes, the Pinot Noir and the Chardonnay (the dominant grape of the Cotes de Beaune).  With such diversity of soil geology and vineyard ownership, it’s not at all surprising that there is no one style of Burgundy wine.  Most producers destem in order to avoid the risk of bitterness and the juice maintains initial contact with the skins from between eight and ten days.