Why does Burgundy mean wine?
We’ll explain from the beginning: in Burgundy we’ve been producing wine for 2,000 years…
And before?
The vine was like the ivy: it parasitized the plants of the forest; and it reproduced with the seeds of the grape, which we made edible by growing it – pruning it was the secret – generation after generation. And that’s how we learned to preserve its juice and to ferment it until we got wine just 2,000 years ago.
Here, Iberian wines were food that could be preserved for months, like bread.
But its wild origin still means that each vineyard acquires its own character by fighting to survive against the peculiar adversity of each terroir. That’s why, in Burgundy, the best wine comes from the worst soil: pebbles, slopes…
Bread with wine and sugar was still my grandparents’ childhood snack.
Wine was food for a thousand years even in monastic culture, and in Burgundy, the Cistercian order, in the abbeys of Vougeot, Cluny…
And here in Escaladei, Santes Creus, Vallbona, Vallclara, Vallsanta…
They gave quality to the sacred food. And in Burgundy they knew how to make them so pleasant for the powerful of all France that they went from being daily food to festive pleasure without ceasing to be sacred.
Are they still torturing the vine?
The vine is like humans: it only gives the best of itself in adversity. And to reach excellence and make us enjoy it has to suffer. And you will get it in terroirs with poor soil rocks and not in rich and irrigated lands, which, on the other hand, give good grapes for desserts.
Well here, in Iberia, there is hard ground.
That’s not enough: there’s also a thousand years of wisdom on how to turn this suffering from the vine into the pleasure of tasting its wine.
Where do those who fail go wrong?
To be in a hurry and greedy: to get many kilos of grapes, for example, by watering or dressing. Or skipping winemaking stages… There are many temptations. And when they put prices…
The fool confuses value with price.
The price is a consequence of the quality, and when the opposite happens: when some fool thinks that raising the price improves the quality of the wine he sells, the person who buys it is as foolish as he. I ask you not to contribute to this global nonsense.
Does ignorance make the barbarian pagan?
I believe that the Spanish and the French must evangelize the global demand and explain to the Chinese, the Russian or the American that, even if he can and is rich, part of the culture of wine is not to pay more than ok, and that the opposite is to make a fool of yourself.
Aren’t burgundies overpriced?
Perhaps, sometimes, the demand is greater than the requirement; but you will still find Burgundies – and we are a small region with little production – that are worth more than the 20 euros they cost.
Don’t they fear millennial powers, like the priories, or recent ones, like California?
I won’t cite specifically, but wines with a lot of fruit, alcohol… are like a showy blow against the calm pleasure of the nuances of a great Burgundy, which after the first glass makes you ask for the next one.
Pornography instead of eroticism?
You say so, but I don’t dislike the simile: today there are wines that are fruit and alcohol porn, and ours is eroticism.
In diversity, after all, is there virtue?
And we open up to the pleasure of this diversity a new global consumer who helps us maintain it: let’s learn together. There is a future.
Aren’t the Chinese and Russians buying great estates and mythical châteaux?
The families of nouveau riche Parisians, attracted by the easy glamor of the wine world, were already doing it, but more so in Bordeaux than in Burgundy, which is small and not made up of big castles, but small plots of land and intensive work. And a lot of vocation.
Why does Burgundy have more?
Phylloxera destroyed the vineyards in 1890, but we recovered them with pinot noir and its daughter, with gouais, chardonnay, by grafting an American variety; then came the war, and since then we have enjoyed 70 good years. But we believe that pinot chose Burgundy, not the other way around, and made it what it is today.
Will the vigneron or the terroir decide?
Both, and politics: in 1395 the duke of Burgundy, Philippe II, Philippe le Hardi, forced us to plant only pinot noir and banned the other vines because the Crusaders had brought the gamay from the Middle East, variety more resistant and productive, but of worse quality.
Long live the duke!
And since then it wasn’t the villages that gave their wines their names: Chambertin, Montrachet, Romanée…, but the wines gave their names and identity to our villages: Gevrey-Chambertin, Puligny-Montrachet , success is not individual, of a millionaire owner or of an elite, as in Bordeaux, but collective: of the whole of Burgundy.
