Category: Burgundy

We spent last Friday morning in the Beaujolais. It’s a charming region -- really a 30 mile vineyard punctuated by a handful of villages. The region’s most widely distributed wine is an inexpensive and insipid red that’s rushed to market several weeks after the harvest. But as connoisseurs have known for years, there’s far more to Beaujolais than meets the…

Chablis has had a rough year so far. With hailstorms and late frosts devastating the region this spring, our conversations during yesterday’s tastings all turned to the cruel whims of Mother Nature. It would have been an entirely depressing visit had it not been for the two most recent, truly excellent vintages already in the cellars.

We arrived in France on Sunday, and are posting updates to our travel blog: AnsoniaWines.com/Travel. So far our nearly meals have all been in outdoor cafés, mostly simple dishes in a classic French style -- steak au poivre, salade de chèvre chaud, foie gras and toast. The wines have been refreshing, straightforward, and delicious: a reminder that sometimes the simplest…

We find some of our favorite values in towns just off the beaten path. The neighbor villages of Chassange-Montrachet and Puligny-Montrachet are the world’s best known sources for fine white wine. But just two miles to the west lies the often-overlooked town of Saint-Aubin, which turns out to be an exceptional source for white Burgundy.

The towns of Pommard and Volnay are giants of the Côte de Beaune reds. Though less than a mile apart, the two towns represent opposing profiles – Volnay tending toward elegant and feminine, and Pommard toward sturdy and masculine. As neighbors they provide an excellent example of the microterroirs of Burgundy.

When vines grow old, vignerons are faced with a choice. Older vines mean lower yields, which can squeeze a domaine’s bottom line. But old vines also produce more concentrated and better quality juice, leading to wines of depth and intensity. Though we understand both sides, we’re always pleased to find vignerons who sacrifice quantity for quality, and allow their vines…

The perfect wine isn’t always the most expensive choice. Put a plate of just opened oysters in front of us, and we might rather pick a Muscadet over a Montrachet. Or consider a choucroute garnie (Alsatian sausage and sauerkraut) -- so perfect is the marriage with an fine Alsatian Riesling, that Hermitage or Haut-Brion would seem out of place.

Sometimes we wonder why Michel Gros makes any white wine at all. The Gros family has lived for generations in Vosne-Romanée, a town that produces some of the finest red wines in the world. His red Burgundies garner high prices and have won him acclaim for decades.

Chardonnay grows in nearly every corner of the winemaking world. With a large spectrum of styles hailing from a wide range of origins, it’s hard to pin down what the grape itself tastes like. But our best suggestion is Chablis, or what wine writer Jon Bonné calls “the world's great, BS-free expression of chardonnay.”

In Burgundy as in real estate, location is everything. Today’s wine comes from a vineyard classified as a Premier Cru, but surrounded by five Grand Crus. It sits along the famous stretch of Grand Crus between Morey-St-Denis and Gevrey-Chambertin, and today many believe its classification has as much to do with centuries-ago politics as any geography.

Gevrey-Chambertin has long been considered Burgundian royalty. The vineyards surrounding the town, first planted around 640 AD, are known for their clay-rich soils, which produce wines of unusual intensity and muscle. Last summer we discovered a new source in the village, the Domaine Gérard Quivy.

Nicolas Maillet is an unusually passionate winemaker. He discusses the finer points of rootstock selection and fermentation chemistry with the same intensity most reserve for Les Bleus (the national soccer team). Even more impressive is how Maillet manages to breathe this energy into his wines, which shimmer with complexity and life.

“Puligny-Montrachet is where Burgundian Chardonnay is at its most complete,” writes Clive Coates MW. The tiny town, covering over less than one square mile, has made highly sought-after wine for nearly a thousand years. Today most consider it, as Coates puts it, “the greatest white wine commune on earth.”