Red burgundy
I HAVE never written a column on bur- gundy before. I have been trying to sort out the reasons. The most obvious is that most of it, the red kind at least, is bad — 90 per cent, according to one merchant and Master of Wine I spoke to recently: some- one who both specialises and believes in the stuff. The next most obvious reason is that it is over-priced. There are no bargains in burgundy, certainly not in the lower Price ranges, because not enough red wine is made there to satisfy a mass demand. As for the upper reaches, it is difficult to regard wine that comes on the market in its first or second year at £15 a bottle as particularly good value. These are power- ful, but not decisive arguments. One could add that red burgundy, at least the 'old- fashioned' style, gets good coverage in these columns already. But no; the real reason is that burgundy is so difficult. I don't mean hard to drink, of course. For inexperienced wine drinkers burgundy is easier to appreciate than claret, and I have known even dyed-in-the-wool claret lovers declare after one of those elusive good bottles from the Cote d'Or that they really prefer burgundy. I think that the Pinot noir (a temperamental grape which refuses to produce exciting wine outside France), combining as it does the haunting and ethereal with the earthy and robust, provides a more generous and exciting sensuous experience than the sterner, more structured cabernet sauvignon. The difficulty with red burgundy is understand- ing the extraordinary complexity and di- versity of ownership and production which characterise the smallish, narrow strip of vineyards, and give rise to the frustrating unreliability of its wines. Smallness of holdings is the basic prob- lem. Whereas in Bordeaux a vineyard like Château Lafite of 120 hectares belongs to one proproetor, the Clos de Vougeot in Burgundy of 50 hectares is divided among more than 50. Not only are the holdings small, they are also unstable, liable to be split into ever smaller units by the com- bination of French laws of inheritance and family greed. One is told that the crucial factor in Burgundy is the grower rather than the vineyard: this is true as far as it goes, but one has to make sure that the grower in question had not had a row with his father/brothet/uncle/son.The Domaine Clair-Dau is only one of several notables racked by family dissension. Even without family trouble, domaines previously held in universal regard seem mysteriously to falter and slip. There have been mutterings recently about the Domaine Armand Rousseau, whose Chambertins have in past been, and I am sure will again be, touchstones of excell- ence. Previously unheard of names like the Domaine Daniel Rion have suddenly (and in this case rightly) become fashionable: Rion's Nuits St Georges Les Vignes Rondes 1984 is a remarkable example of what skilled wine-making can achieve in an unpromising year — deep in colour and bouquet, strikingly concentrated in fla- vour, not particularly cheap at £15 a bottle. If growers' reputations rise and sink in an alarming way, how about the presum- ably more stable negociants? Negociants in Burgundy do not have a good reputation in general, especially for red wines, and when Anthony Hanson revealed in his con- troversial book that the grandest of them all, Louis Latour, pasteurised its reds, it cannot have helped their cause. A trend towards domaine bottling had already been in evidence, but has gathered pace in the last two or three years. The negociants will unquestionably have had less good mate- rial to 'raise'. Latour still produces some of the best white wines in the world, but the negociants, apart from some worthy wines from their own domaine made by Jadot, look less and less promising as sources of fine red burgundy.
Are there are clear pointers for the burgundy-lover lost in this confusing world? I think there is at least one, though it may not be encouraging. After recent tastings I conclude that it is worth paying the extra £4 or £5 (say between f10 and £15) for a really good burgundy — a premier cru from a good grower rather than a village wine, even if also from a good grower. The difference in class be- tween the Rion wine mentioned above and his plain Nuits 1983 (much better vintage notwithstanding) is far greater than the price differential would suggest. At the higher levels burgundy can offer as good value as claret, at the middle level it cannot.
Ausonius
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