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Sub-region · France

Côte de Beaune

The southern half of the Côte d’Or, and the home of the world’s benchmark oaked Chardonnay.

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What to expect in the glass

Chardonnay with weight, nuttiness and citrus, oaked but rarely overtly so, and capable of long ageing. Pinot Noir that is lighter and earthier than the Côte de Nuits.

About Côte de Beaune

Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet produce the wines that defined what serious barrel-fermented Chardonnay can be: hazelnut, oatmeal and citrus, with a texture built from lees contact and time in oak rather than from sweetness.

Reds from Volnay, Pommard and Beaune are generally softer and earlier-drinking than their Côte de Nuits counterparts, with Volnay in particular known for perfume and delicacy.

The southern half of the Côte d’Or, and the source of most of the world’s benchmark Chardonnay — Montrachet, Meursault, Corton-Charlemagne. It also makes a great deal of Pinot Noir, which is consistently less celebrated than the whites and often better value.

The slope faces east and south-east, and the grand cru sites sit in a narrow band mid-slope where drainage is best and the soil is thinnest. Above it the topsoil runs out; below it, the ground is richer and the wine is not.

Côte de Beaune is a sub-region, not an appellation

No authority delimits this name or attaches rules to it. A named division within a wine region that carries no geographical indication of its own. 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

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
Latitude
47.0° N
Temperature
Moderate
Day–night swing
Moderate
Rainfall
Rain at harvest is a real risk
Frost risk
High

Marginal and continental, with spring frost and harvest rain both capable of deciding the year. The 2016 frost removed most of the crop in parts of the slope.

Marginally warmer and more open than the Côte de Nuits, and equally exposed to spring frost.

Vintage variation

Vintage matters enormously

A marginal climate where ripeness is not guaranteed and the weather at flowering and at harvest can decide the year. The difference between two consecutive vintages here can be larger than the difference between two producers.

  • Latitude. At around 47°, ripeness is usually reached but is not a formality.
  • Rain at harvest. Rain during the picking window is the single most decisive weather event in wine. It dilutes, it splits berries, and it invites rot into a crop days from being picked — and whether it falls is essentially luck.
  • Spring frost. A frost after budburst destroys the shoots carrying that year’s crop. The vine regrows, but the secondary buds are less fruitful, so the effect is a small vintage rather than a poor one.
  • Continental influence. No large body of water to buffer the extremes. Continental places have hotter summers, colder winters and sharper frost risk, all of which widen the gap between years.

Derived from the climate above, not from anyone’s view of particular years. Why there are no vintage scores here.

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 with a higher proportion of marl and clay, which is the conventional explanation for why the Côte de Beaune's greatest wines are white where its neighbour's are red.

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

  • Aloxe-Corton — The village around the hill of Corton, which carries the Côte de Beaune’s only red Grand Cru and its greatest white.
  • Beaune — The walled town at the centre of the Burgundy trade, and a large village appellation with forty-two Premier Crus and no Grand Cru.
  • Chassagne-Montrachet — The southern half of the Montrachet hill, historically a red-wine village and now overwhelmingly white.
  • Meursault — The largest white-wine village of the Côte d’Or, and the byword for rich, buttery, hazelnut-scented Chardonnay.
  • Pommard — The sturdiest red of the Côte de Beaune — tannic, dark and long-lived, with no Grand Cru and no shortage of reputation.
  • Puligny-Montrachet — The most precise and mineral-toned of the great white villages, sharing Montrachet itself with its neighbour Chassagne.
  • Saint-Aubin — A side-valley village behind the Montrachet hill, and the best-value white Burgundy on the Côte d’Or.
  • Savigny-lès-Beaune — A large village in a side valley north of Beaune, and one of the better-value red appellations on the Côte d’Or.
  • Volnay — Pommard’s neighbour and its opposite: the most perfumed and delicate red on the Côte de Beaune.

Compared with

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.

White Burgundy

Serve at 10–13°C (lightly chilled).

Try with salmon in a cream sauce, halibut or scallops.

Red Burgundy

Serve at 14–16°C (cellar cool).

Try with fillet steak, mushroom pasta or steak with béarnaise.

Sources

Sources consulted