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Appellation · France

Pommard

The sturdiest red of the Côte de Beaune — tannic, dark and long-lived, with no Grand Cru and no shortage of reputation.

Pommard AOCcontinentalcool
What to expect in the glass

Full-bodied for red Burgundy — dark cherry and plum, firm tannin, an earthy, sometimes rustic depth. Needs at least five years and rewards ten.

About Pommard

Pommard is the most tannic and least immediately charming red on the Côte de Beaune. It has more clay in its soils than its neighbours, and the wines have correspondingly more colour, more tannin and more capacity to age.

The reputation is double-edged. Pommard was heavily over-produced in the twentieth century and the name still carries some of that, while the two great Premier Crus — Les Rugiens and Les Épenots — make wine that stands with anything in the Côte de Beaune.

It is white-wine country either side and makes no white at all: the appellation is red only.

What the name means

Legal name
Pommard AOC
Type
Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée / Protégée (AOC / AOP)
Set by
INAO
Regulates
Origin, plus grape varieties, maximum yields, minimum ageing.

The delimited area, permitted varieties, maximum yields, minimum alcohol, pruning and training methods, and in many cases minimum ageing. Administered by INAO.

Worth knowing

Red wine only. Two Premier Crus, Les Rugiens and Les Épenots, are long-standing candidates for promotion to Grand Cru.

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.

Soil and geology

Soils
Clay-rich limestone soils, with iron oxide colouring the ground red in Les Rugiens
Drainage
Moderate
Water holding
High

What it does to the vine. More clay than most of the Côte de Beaune, holding water and cooling the root zone. Vines here ripen steadily and the fruit carries thicker skins, which is the physical basis of the appellation’s firmer structure.

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.

Rules worth knowing

Confirmed in the EU register

Pommard is registered as a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), file number PDO-FR-A0193, protected at EU level since 1973.

Article 107 of Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013

Only the rules that change what to expect in the glass or on the label. WineHQ does not reproduce production specifications, and each entry carries the date it was last checked because appellation rules change.

The designation is confirmed above. WineHQ has not read this appellation’s production specification, so it publishes no yields, ageing minima or permitted-variety lists for it — those come from the document linked above, not from a summary of it.

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.

Where to go next

Places worth trying if you like this one — neighbours, rivals, and the obvious step across.

  • Volnay — Pommard’s neighbour and its opposite: the most perfumed and delicate red on the Côte de Beaune.
  • 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.
  • Meursault — The largest white-wine village of the Côte d’Or, and the byword for rich, buttery, hazelnut-scented Chardonnay.
Location

Approximate centroid: 47.00°, 4.79°. WineHQ stores coordinates only where it has them, and does not estimate boundaries it has not sourced.

Sources

Sources consulted