Wine region · France
Burgundy
A narrow strip of eastern France where Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are divided into hundreds of individually named vineyard plots.
About Burgundy
Burgundy is organised around plots of land rather than estates. A single vineyard may be divided among dozens of owners, each making their own wine from a few rows, which is why two bottles bearing the same vineyard name can differ considerably.
The hierarchy runs from regional Bourgogne, through village wines named after a commune, to Premier Cru and finally Grand Cru — the last being individually named vineyards, around thirty of them, mostly in the Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune.
The practical grape rule: red Burgundy is Pinot Noir and white Burgundy is Chardonnay, with Beaujolais (Gamay) and Aligoté as the significant exceptions.
Burgundy is the region that made the concept of terroir central to wine, largely through centuries of monastic observation that adjacent plots consistently produced different wine from the same grape.
No authority delimits this name or attaches rules to it. A country’s major wine division, usually containing appellations or sub-regions beneath it. That does not make it less real or less useful — it means nothing legal follows from it, and you will not generally find it on a label as a controlled designation.
Grapes
Wines from here
white
Chablis
Unoaked Chardonnay from the coolest corner of Burgundy: citrus, green apple, high acidity and a distinctly saline finish.
red
Red Burgundy
Pinot Noir at its most perfumed and site-specific: pale, silky, high in acid, and the reference point for the variety worldwide.
white
White Burgundy
Barrel-fermented Chardonnay from the Côte de Beaune and Mâconnais — the model every serious oaked Chardonnay in the world is measured against.
Climate
Continental and marginal: cold winters, warm summers, and real frost and hail risk. Vintage variation is larger than in almost any other classic region.
These are influences on how a wine turns out, not determinants of it. Picking date, yield, vine age and every winemaking decision sit between the climate and the glass.
Soil and geology
Limestone and marl in complex, closely interleaved bands along the escarpment. The vineyard classification broadly follows where those bands sit on the slope.
WineHQ describes soil in terms of what it demonstrably does — drainage, heat retention, water supply, rooting depth — and not in terms of flavours it is said to transmit. Vines take up ions, not aromas, and no mechanism has been demonstrated by which a mineral in the ground is tasted in the glass. See soil and drainage.
Places within it
- Bourgogne AOC — The regional appellation at the base of the Burgundy pyramid — the entry point to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, and where most people should start.
- Chablis and the Grand Auxerrois — Burgundy’s northernmost outpost in the Yonne, a hundred kilometres from the Côte d’Or, holding Chablis and a handful of much smaller appellations.
- Côte Chalonnaise — A more affordable stretch of Burgundy south of the Côte d’Or, with Rully, Mercurey and Givry.
- Côte d’Or — A single limestone escarpment some fifty kilometres long, carrying almost all of Burgundy’s Grand Crus and most of its reputation.
- Mâconnais — Southern Burgundy’s Chardonnay heartland, warmer and rounder than the Côte d’Or, and home to Pouilly-Fuissé.
What to eat, and how to serve it
Derived from this region’s signature styles. Each is listed separately, because a region does not have one serving temperature.
Red Burgundy
Serve at 14–16°C (cellar cool).
Try with fillet steak, mushroom pasta or steak with béarnaise.
White Burgundy
Serve at 10–13°C (lightly chilled).
Try with salmon in a cream sauce, halibut or scallops.
Approximate centroid: 47.05°, 4.83°. WineHQ stores coordinates only where it has them, and does not estimate boundaries it has not sourced.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Institut national de l’origine et de la qualité (INAO) — INAO, France
- eAmbrosia — the EU geographical indications register — European Commission