Burgundy is the region we know the best and love the most. We lived there for a year in 1998-99, and got to know the wines well, from everyday glasses to those we think are the world’s best. So it should come as no surprise that the majority of the wines we import are from Burgundy.
The Côte d’Or (“golden slope”) is the part of Burgundy that produces its greatest wines, with whites from Chardonnay and reds from PInot Noir. Its towns include storied names like Meursault, Vosne-Romanée, and Gevrey Chambertin, and the wines are priced accordingly.
But there is more to Burgundy. An hour to the north of the Côte d’Or lies Chablis, whose wonderful white wines (also Chardonnay) are among the world’s greatest wine values. Just to the south of the Côte d’Or is the Côte Chalonnaise, where we are able to buy excellent wines at better prices from less famous villages like Givry and Rully. Continuing south is the Maconnais, where producers like Nicolas Maillet make wines of extraordinary purity in and around Verzé,as well as superb white Burgundy from Pouilly-Fuissé.
The Beaujolais makes up the southernmost part of Burgundy. There the red wine grape is Gamay. Most of the wine from the Beaujolais is like most of the white from Muscadet — straightforward and inexpensive, meant for drinking young. We have focused on its more serious wine — that from the ten Beaujolais towns with the Cru appellation, where the wine is denser, more complex, and more age-worthy.
