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Published: November 14th 2007
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Probably the two best white wines in Burgundy begin life, respectively, in vineyards covering strategic sections of the Corton hill and on Montrachet (Mont trachet, meaning "scabby hill").
These wines are typically intense, can be long lived, and are made only from chardonnay.
Of course, you will never find chardonnay mentioned on the bottle anywhere. A all-too-common failing of French wine, which can make it a little inaccessible for the New World wine appreciant. Still, the French don't do things to everyone else's taste; which is good, if you don't like Starbucks coffee anyway.
There's not exactly a lot to go around. The white wines on Le Corton are called Corton-Charlemagne, reputedly because they were that 7th Century's French king's favorite white wine, but the white wine growing areas on Le Corton cover only 45 hectares (110 acres).
Red wine is also grown on Le Corton and is simply called Corton. Monty Python aficionados will recall in the hotel inspector episode that the man who Basil thought was an inspector, but who was in fact an outboard motor salesman, ordered a bottle of (corked) Corton. "It's got a cork," said Basil, "didn't you see me pull it
out?".
Even so, production of Corton-Charlemagne dwarfs Montrachet which consists of a mere 7.8 hectares - under 20 acres, a lifestyle block in most places in New Zealand.
The village of Chassagne-Montrachet shares the Montrachet hill with its neighboring village of Puligny-Montrachet. Some years ago, a Frenchman had the brilliant idea that villages in Burgundy should change their names to include reference to their finest wine-growing areas. So, the village of Aloxe became Aloxe-Corton, and the village of Vosne became Vosne-Romanee. Inspired, huh?
In case you were wondering, Romanee-Conti, which makes red wine from the Pinot Noir grape, consists of 1.8 hectares. This partly explains its stratospheric (or, near-Earth orbital) 6,000 Euro per bottle price tag. A bottle of Montrachet or Le Montrachet Grand Cru (the name depends on where on the slopes the vineyard lies, and which of the two villages is closest) will cost upwards of 300 Euros in an average year. One day, an economics student will chart the abundance of supply of Burgundian wines from different appellations against their price, and I suspect we will see a perfectly exponential demand/supply curve. Perhaps this has been already done: who knows?
All these wines are "Grands Crus" - the highest accolade bestowed by the the French on wine producing areas. Only a tiny percentage of production from the Burgundy region is Grand Cru, as you get told everywhere you go -- normally, immediately after you ask whether there is any Grand Cru available for tasting.
Oddly, second-rank wines in Burgundy are labelled "Premier Cru". Unlike in Bordeaux, where the best wine is perfectly sensibly badged as Premier Cru. With the exception of Chateau d'Yquem in Sauternes, which is Premier Cru Superieur, and St Emilion (where different classifications are used) and Pomerol (where there is no classification system at all). So, all quite clear then, and no need for the technocrats in the European Parliament to interfere in the interests of consumer confidence.
Due to the egalitarian inheritance laws of France, the small vineyards, or parcels, which fill each hill of nearly planted vines are themselves subdivided in ownership, with the lucky proprieteres possibly only owning a few lines of vines. It brings a nice patchwork quilt dimension to looking at a vineyard. Economies of scale are out the window in this place.
Ownership of parcels of land on Montrachet does not change often, but sometimes the vines change hands. For example, a large producer of Burgundy (William Fevre?) was able to buy a few row of vines on Montrachet, but only enough to make a large barrel of wine. You might think this meant that the hills would be a surveyor's paradise, with pegs and signs everywhere delineating ownerships. But not that we could see - the growers just seem to know their vines. Different lines of vines in the same vineyard can on a given day be weeded, or not, or pruned, or not, or trellised in subtly different ways.
On Saturday we went to Chassagne-Montrachet, and after looking in on the vines on the way past stopped in at the municipal wineshop. We were not expecting a great deal, as we'd had some distinctly ordinary tastings up the road in the wine town of Beaune a couple of days before. The tasting menu at these places in Beaune looks superficially good with some famous names (but the not years of the vintage) displayed at the door. But both times it turned out to consist of cheap or modest wines from good years, and more expensive wines from poor years.
The merchants might shrug and say, what do you expect when you are tasting 15 wines for 10 Euro on a self-guided tour? At least you learn what you are not going to enjoy, which is educational. Quite so, but you could come away wondering what all the fuss is about, and head straight back to the £2.99 Aussie section in the local Tesco.
None of this mediocrity for the masses at the municipal cave at Chassagne-Montrachet. Fine premier crus wines from the neighbouring village Puligny-Montrachet are open and ready for the tasting with a charming guy to chat to you about them. A pleasant way to spend a wet Saturday - the first day's rain we'd experienced in a month in France. We came away with a mixed case of delicious 2004 Chassagnes and Pulignys.
Alexandre Dumas, author of the Three Musketeers, said that Puligny should be drunk on bended knee, with reverentially bared head. There's something to that.
Sunday was overcast and damp, but the weather picked up on Monday, and we decided to walk over to Le Corton, which is a few kilometres from where we are staying in Villers-de-Magny. It was a lovely day, and even if there was starting to be a nip in the air in the second week of November, you'd be pretty hard hearted to not feel on top of your game on a nice walk on country roads through vineyards.
The French are a polite and formal nation, for the most part. It is rude to enter any shop or restaurant and not greet the owner, even if you are just wandering in for a look. So we'd got into the habit of saying hello to people we encountered. It didn't wash at Pernand-Vergelesses - the village to the South-West of Corton. An old guy was sitting on a fence in the road, but didn't return my cheery greeting. "Must be a bit deaf", I thought.
I greeted a guy a few minutes later, in his 60s or so, intending to ask him if the heavily planted hill in front of us was in fact Le Corton. But he looked at me for a second or two , then turned and walked into his shed. "Bit rude," I thought.
Maybe our warm and casual walking clothes put them off. "If you dress like a tramp, people will treat you like one", as a character once said in Jeffrey Archer's seminal work Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less. Perhaps I should have shaved this week?
The sun came out as we climbed the hill. We watched huge flocks of swallows swooping in the far distance, looking like tornados as they turned and merged with other flocks. Nature's skyworks.
Down below, road snaked through the heavily planted (but lesser) vines further down the slopes.
You can see how they can make good wine here up on Le Corton. The hill gets sun all day, the vines are a little under 300m up, so they miss the frost, and the lime-stone in the soil and the slopes make for excellent drainage. You become an instant convert to the idea that the land (the terroir) shapes the wine as much as the contributions of weather and winemaker.
As we walked round the hill on a narrow path, two cars came past full of Frenchmen. We waved and smiled. The remaining clouds parted, the sun beamed down on us, and the countryside lit up. All was well.
A couple of hundred metres on, the French stopped and decanted themselves from their cars. Bottles and glasses were produced. "Hello," they said in French as we approached. "Would you like some wine? We are trying the 2005 Corton-Charlemagne Grand Cru, which was grown in vines immediately to your left up the hill." Yes, that would be very kind!
The bottle was labelled "Corton-Charlemagne 2005" but not the usual label with the owner's name, and severe health warnings about the operation of machinery after intemperate alcoholic consumption. The wine was made with a Rexel labelmaker. Something from someone's private collection, perhaps?
Wine ritual. Pass out the glasses. Reverently pour the wine. Swirl, sniff, hold it up to the light. More swirling, more sniffing. Everyone had a glass. "Sante" (good health).
"Bon souvenir," one said. Quite right there.
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