On Burgundy

Jasper Morris MW (2010)

Who Are the Burgundians?

Jasper Morris MW delves back to the Gaulish origins of this sometimes far-from-saintly tribe and explores what makes these wine people tick – whether they’ve been born and bred into the family business or come to it from the other side of the world.

The idea for this article came from a remark made by Henri Boillot when we were discussing current vineyard practices. He likes the idea of organic farming in principle, but in order for it to work in practice, everybody would have to be signed up to it. I asked him how it was possible that some people – we were just driving past a nasty example in Puligny – could still use heavy doses of herbicide rather than plough their vineyards, which is slowly becoming the norm. ‘Ce sont tous des Gaillois’, Boillot replied with a shrug – ‘They are all Gauls’. This made me think of Henri Vincenot’s comment that the history of Burgundy is, even today (Vincenot was writing in the second half of the 20th century), the story of the fight between the Gauls and the Romans. More of them and their Burgundian successors later.

Burgundians can be stubborn and secretive. They are the perfect subjects for the ‘gnarled peasant’ school of wine writers. Clive Coates MW tells a story of his first-ever visit to taste wine in Vosne-Romanée. He had two appointments, and on leaving the first, he asked for directions to the second. ‘Never heard of him,’ came the reply. When Clive eventually reached his second appointment, he discovered that this winemaker’s cellar backed on to that of the first vigneron, who was his brother-in-law!

When I first began to visit wineries professionally, few vignerons had tasted in their neighbours’ cellars, and very few had explored outside their own region at all. Some made wine simply because that was the world into which they had been born. Some made great wines. Some repeated happily the mistakes of their fathers and grandfathers. The late headmaster of my prep school would have appreciated it. Turning up late to a headmasters’ conference meeting, he

discovered a vote in progress by way of a show of hands. Without finding out what the subject in hand was, he offered his view at once: ‘If it’s for change, then I’m against it.’

Burgundy was a close-knit community. Vignerons have always had a tendency to marry each other. Research on the late 18th century shows that nearly 80 percent of vignerons in both Pommard and Vosne married other vignerons. (The marriages would typically take place on a Tuesday in January or February; in addition, it appears that vignerons tended to die in September or October, doubtless of exhaustion!) I can think of at least two different vigneron families where, in the not-too-distant past, a Monsieur X has married a girl of the same name, though apparently not an actual relative.

Burgundians – from the boy next door, to the aristocrat in the big house – are effectively peasant farmers. They see themselves as tenants for life of their family domaines rather than owners of a business that is theirs to dispose of. This is central to the Burgundian ethos – a point missed by Jean-Robert Pitte in his otherwise excellent book comparing Bordeaux and Burgundy (2008). Jonathan Nossiter, in his film Mondovino, picked up an element of the profound Burgundian feeling through the scenes with Hubert de Montille, and time spent with Michel Lafarge, who hails from the same village, reinforces the point. Volnay Taillepieds existed before Hubert de Montille, and it will exist after him,

Who Are the Burgundians

Caption to come Rum voluptaectis sinveri tatus, cone ipsaeptur maionsed eum eium es alitatur alibustium quist et quatiisti aut peri officil et ipsunt quo temped ulpa nam que quisser orporit ioriatio

but his interpretation of this vineyard has nonetheless defined a part of Burgundy for a generation of wine lovers over and above the appreciation of a good glass of burgundy. The same is every bit as true for Clos des Chênes and Michel Lafarge. Something of the spirit of the producer is clearly infused into the wines they make. This is perhaps not unique to Burgundy – Chave Hermitage also comes to mind – but it is an approach that does require a small-scale operation where one person’s influence defines the wine, the potential for greatness that comes from a classic terroir, and a sense of history that comes from multiple generations on the same land. Burgundy certainly offers this far more than any other French region. Rousseau Chambertin is far more than the combination of a fine domaine and a great vineyard. And it does not seem to matter whether it is Charles or his son Eric at the helm for the magic to work.

The Foreign Influence

Even conservative Burgundy is not immutable – and nor should it be. Change is inevitable, though it may take a new generation to implement it. Today, of course, almost every youthful vigneron will have been to the local wine school, will certainly have tasted at many other domaines, and may have done an internship or two in the New World. Burgundian vignerons today are a little less likely than in the past to marry within the same village (or, indeed, a namesake). The choice is now global: I can think of numerous American spouses (three in Morey-St-Denis alone), British brides and Japanese wives who have refreshed the Burgundian scene.

If you are not lucky enough to fall in love with – or capture the heart of – a well-endowed Burgundian (speaking of vineyards here) who wants to marry you, then you need to be rich enough to buy a business or brave enough and wellfunded enough to start one yourself.

No society can last without an influx of new blood, and this will certainly have happened throughout the history of Burgundy. It does not take long for a former foreigner to become part of the landscape – think of the domaines of Polish extraction that are now in the hands of the third generation or more. The original immigrants may have begun without many material possessions, but hard work and the good fortune of being on the scene during a time when viticultural land could be purchased relatively cheaply enabled workers to become farmers and then landowners – whence the origins of such domaines as Sérafin and Heresztyn in Gevrey-Chambertin. Bryzcek in Morey-St-Denis and

Maroslavac in Puligny-Montrachet.

Other continental Europeans have since staked their claims within the Burgundy wine trade. Swiss operations in Burgundy include the Schenk group’s ownership of Henri de Villamont and Gilbert Hammel’s purchase of Naigeon-Chauveau, while André Ziltner bought the former Domaine Grivelet in Chambolle-Musigny and turned it into an up-market hotel. Domaine Bertagna and Clos des Lambrays are both German-owned. There are many examples of wealthy foreign individuals or corporations who have bought in whole or in part, major Burgundian businesses. Japanese investors are behind Joseph Drouhin and Domaine Leroy: Americans own Louis Jadot and Camille Giroud; while a consortium including American and Canadian investors has recently purchased Remoissenet. In each case, however, it is local Burgundians who are running the businesses on the ground. Sometimes one might think that Burgundians are more tolerant of foreign intervention than of French, especially if it is from Bordeaux. Having said that, however, the Champenois have generally been kindly received, from Henriot (Bouchard Père & Fils) to Bollinger (Chanson), while Laurent-Perrier was previously involved with Antonin Rodet.

If you already have some knowledge of the wine business and can see a commercial opening – or perhaps just want to come and live here – it is a relatively uncomplicated option to set up a small business, buying wine in cask and then bottling it. There are some interesting partnerships that have developed in recent years from various parts of the globe. Michael Ragg, English wine merchant and brother of World of Fine Wine contributor Edward, has teamed up with Australian winemaker Michael Twelftree to from Mischief & Mayhem. Maison Lou Dumont in Gevrey-Chambertin is the brainchild of Japanese former sommelier Koji Nakada and his Korean wife Jae Hwa Park. Mounir Saouma and Rotem Brakir bring the Middle East to Burgundy with their business Lucien Le Moine, the name a reference to Mounir’s training in a Lebanese monastery.

It is an even more ambitious option to decide that you want to make a career change, to throw up your promising career in Washington DC and start making wine in Burgundy. Both Blair Pethel, a former financial journalist originally from North Carolina, and Alex Gambal, whose family ran a successful business in parking lots and real estate, have done just that. The former has managed to purchase vineyards of his own, even at premier and grand cru level, supplemented by some purchased grapes, while the latter has developed a thriving négociant business under his own name.

Who Are the Burgundians

Chris Newman is a second-generation American in Burgundy; his father Robert having created the domaine in the 1950s at the instigation of RussianAmerican-Bordelais Alexis Lichine. Chris has been in charge since 1990, and he is now assisted by Australian Jane Eyre to complete the global mix. Recently, there has been some intriguing media coverage about Scotsman David Clark (though he is also claimed by American wine writers for themselves, I note, because David was born in Indianapolis). David is the first Briton in the Côte d’Or to apply himself to viticulture on his own account since Yorkshireman Tim Marshall retired from his smallholding in Nuits-St-Georges, though fellow Scots Sir David Murray and his son Keith are now behind Domaine Jessiaume in Santenay.

Arguably though, the most influential Englishman in Burgundian history dates back 900 years. This was Stephen Harding from Dorset, who helped Robert of Molesme set up the abbey of Cîteaux in 1098 and became its third abbot from 1108 until 1133. It was during the early part of his tenure that numerous daughter-houses – such as La Ferté near Chalons and Pontigny close to Chablis – were founded. Harding also gave significant assistance to the future Saint Bernard, encouraging him to set up a new monastery at Clairvaux.

In the beginning was the word

But back to the origins. There were, in fact, several Gaulish tribes in what is now Burgundy. The two most important ones were the Aedui, based at Bibracte on Mont Beuvray, and the Sequani, across the Saône in what is now Franche Comté. Lesser tribes included the Manduli (near Alésia), the Lingons (Langres) and the Senones (Sens). These and other Gaulish tribes were brought together in the fight against Caesar’s Romans by Vercingetorix, who was an Arvernian from the Massif Central.

The Gauls were reputed to be stubborn, like their modern-day Burgundian counterparts, but they were eventually subjugated by Julius Caesar, who wrote about it in his De Bello Gallico. I still remember the exploits of Cotta and Labienus from my first Latin lessons. Vercingetorix was defeated and captured in 52BC at Alésia. If you take the train to Dijon, you can see a statue of Vercingetorix, some seven metres (23 foot) tall, standing on an even more massive plinth, on the hillside above Alise-Ste-Reine (just south of Montbard), the presumed site of Alésia.

The debate continues as to the exact date of the first plantings of vineyards

in Burgundy, but it is agreed that it was during the Roman occupation. The oration of Eumenius to the Emperor Constantius at Autun in AD 310, in which he bemoans the poor state of the vineyards, with their masses of old vine roots, is taken as proof of the wine industry having already been in place for some time. Then, in 2008, came an exciting find on the outskirts of GevreyChambertin, with evidence of a small vineyard dating to the first century AD. The vines were evidently planted in small pits, two to a pit separated by stones, so that their roots would not conflict. Some 316 pits in 26 rows were found on this site just outside Gevrey. This conjures up a vision of a member of the Roman professional classes based in Dijon, amusing himself by planting a ‘lifestyle’ block of vines at his weekend villa, in the same way as the doctors and lawyers of Australia, New Zealand and California have done in the Yarra Valley, Gibbston Valley and Napa Valley.

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, a Scandinavian people had left the mainland for the island of Burgundarholm (now Bornholm), off the coast of Sweden. From here, they crossed to the German mainland and became effectively border guards for the Roman Empire, being settled near Württemberg in the late 3rd century. They eventually settled near Worms in the early 5th century. The relevance of the Burgundians, or Burgondes, today is mostly their having provided the name for the region. Why the tribe was called the Burgondes in the first place is open to dispute. There are various theories:

• Orosius, writing in AD 417 (Historiae Adversum Paganos), suggested that the Burgundians had been installed by the Romans to guard their frontier posts, or ‘burgs’. This view was repeated in the 6th-century Life of Sigismund.

• Wackernagel (Glossar zur Altdeutschen Lesebuch; Basel, 1840) offers ‘fighting peasants’, on the basis of the Gothic bur (peasant) and gundia (warrior).

• R de Belloguet (Questions Bourguignonnes; Dijon 1846) suggests ‘stormchildren’, from the Norse bor (north wind) and kundar (children).

• Jahn (Geschichte der Burgundionen und Burgundiens bis sum Ende der I Dynastie; Halle 1874) coordinated all possible ancient references to the Burgundians and concluded that ‘burg’ was the key to their name and that the Burgundians distinguished themselves from other tribes by the solidity of their houses and settlements.

• TE Karsten (Les Anciens Germains; Paris 1931) proposed that the name comes from the Island of Bornholm, formerly Burgundarholm, meaning ‘the island of high plateau’, which it is, though the alternative theory – that

Who Are the Burgundians

the island took its name from the tribe that settled it – is also plausible. The connection between Bornholm and Burgundians certainly dates back a long way: King Alfred the Great (849–899), translating Orosius, calls the inhabitants of Bornholm ‘Burgendas’.

The ruling family were the Nibelungs, of Wagnerian fame. According to some sources, including The Ring Cycle itself (and the story is vastly confused by the conflation of different legends), the Nibelungs were dwarfs, led by Alberich, ‘king of the elfs’, whereas the Burgundians appear to have been giants. Sidonius Apollinarius refers to them as seven foot (2.1m) tall, and the Abbé Dubois in his Notice sur Volnay mentions (perhaps rather credulously) the digging up of enormous bones from the churchyard there in 1839.

In this short letter written in poetic form to his friend Catullinus, happily ensconsed in comfortable Rome, Sidonius Apollinarius paints quite an unattractive picture of the huge, greasy, smelly Burgundians he is stuck with:

Even if I could, why ask me write A witty verse fit for a wedding night

Surrounded as I am by hairy mobs

Who talk with Teutonic tones of yobs. Where I must praise with disingenuous mutter Burgundian bards who style their hair with butter. You ask me what drives poetry away? Having to hear barbarian songs all day! Nor does it suit my poor six-footed muse

To pay a seven-foot patron all his dues. Your eyes, your ears, still more your nose are blessed By morning stench of garlic unoppressed Which ten Burgundian breakfasters exhale Whose morning raids can cause my cook to quail. The larder of Alcinous could not stand The depredations of that Titan band. But now I pause, lest lines refined and lyrical Should seem to some a touch satirical.

(Translation by Emily Shaw)

By the late 4th century, the Burgundians had become Christian (albeit Arians rather than Catholics) and fought with the Empire against the Alemanii. However, pressure from invading Huns forced them westward, especially after the massacre inflicted by Attila in AD 436, in which the Nibelung Burgundian kind Gunther lost his life. Gunther’s son Gundioc brought his people into the Savoie (Sapaudia) in 443 and established his capital at Geneva. The Burgundians were cattle drovers and brought their beasts with them. Today’s Montbéliarde cows (alas, much less popular than the ubiquitous Charolais) are apparently descendants of this ancient stock.

Gundioc was succeeded by his sons Gundobad, Chilperic and Godesgisel until the former murdered his brothers. Gundobad send Chilperic’s daughters to a nunnery, but Clothilde escaped and married Clovis, king of the Franks. Her sons got their revenge by killing the next Burgundian king Sigismund, in 523, and defeating the last of the Nibelung kings, Godomar, in 534.

Despite all this infighting, the Burgondes did understand the rule of law, and indeed we are indebted to them for one of the earliest Germanic legal codes, the Lex Gundobada, or Lex Burgundionum. This is a written collection of laws issued by King Gundobad (who reigned 474–516, the best-known of the Burgundian kings. The Lex Gundobada was a record of Burgundian customary law and is typical of the many Germanic law codes from the period. It also shows that the Burgundians relied heavily on viticulture for sustenance. There are 109 laws in all, of which 16 refer to agriculture, and half of these are exclusively or partially devoted to viticulture.

If vignerons had to drive out pigs from their vineyards, they could slaughter the best one and keep it. This did not apply to cattle and horses, which were too valuable. The subsequent Law 89 refined this, claiming that the owner could kill and keep the best beast if it were sheep, goat or boar. If it were a cow, he could do so only after giving the animal’s owner three warnings. Oxen, mules and horses had to be caught and returned after the owner had paid a suitable fine.

If humans did wilful damage, the penalties could be severe. A free man entering a vineyard by day and damaging it was fined three sous. A slave doing the same would suffer the death penalty. If the free man did the damage at night, he could be attacked and killed by the owner.

A free man who entered the vineyard to steal was fined two sous, with a further three sous’ damages to the owner, who again could kill the thief at nighttime. An offending slave (by day) would receive 300 lashes, which was more

Who Are the Burgundians

or less a death sentence, and he would certainly receive the death penalty for transgression by night. Theft of corn was treated much more lightly than theft of grapes.

Law 31 deals with Burgundians accused of illegally planting vines on land that did not belong to them. If the owner of the land did not complain immediately, then the vigneron could keep his plantation but had to compensate the owner with equivalent land elsewhere. If the owner had opposed the planting from the start, he got to keep the new vineyard. Wouldn’t it be fun if the new kids on the Burgundy block today could still do that?

First published in The World of Fine Wine, and reproduced here with kind permission of the author and publishers.

Bart Van Loo (2021)

A Saintly Job (But Someone’s Got to do it…)

How the monasteries took on the lucrative job of tempering God’s wrath – paid to pray for all, from peasants and paupers to the lords in the castle – which gave them the wealth to plant grape vines and create the most beatific of all drinks. Bart Van Loo charts the church’s commanding influence in shaping the burgundies we know today.

‘A White Cloak of Churches’

Not far from virgin forests, where rabbits, martens, wild boars, lynxes and bears roamed free (if they hadn’t already been slaughtered during the tedious hunting parties organized by local potentates), lay the idyllic village of Cluny, which, aside from its hunting lodge, wooden chapel and a few shabby vineyards, had nothing to recommend it. This Burgundian hamlet, with its paradisiacal sweetness, was the ideal place to accommodate a new monastery. The hunters would have to satisfy their cravings elsewhere. The yelping of the hounds was replaced by the praying of monks. The new Benedictine abbey was consecrated on 11th September 910 as an independent institution. By the middle of the 11th century, it had grown into the centre of a religious network that numbered 1,500 monasteries, one of first multinationals in history.

Ora et labora. Pray and work. Cluny bent the age-old Rule of Saint Benedict to its purposes. The accent shifted to the first aspect of the Rule, and not slightly but overwhelmingly. The monks may have had a symbolic encounter with a rake or a shovel, but it was serfs and tenant farmers who did most of the work. When it came to prayer and singing, however, they performed with gusto. As the Burgundian monk and chronicler Raoul Glaber wrote: ‘I myself am witness that in this monastery it is a custom... that Masses be celebrated constantly from the earliest hour of the day until the hour assigned for rest.’ At the height of their spiritual productivity, the brothers (who, thank God, could relieve each other owing to their sheer numbers) sang their way through 138 psalms in a single day, while Saint Benedict was quite happy if the monks could

get through 150 a week. ‘…and they go about it with so much dignity and piety and veneration’, Glaber continued, ‘that one would think they were angels rather than men.’

The monks of Cluny made it a point of honour to attend to the spiritual welfare of the dead. The order laid the basis for the celebration of All Souls’ Day on November 2nd. An ever-expanding cemetery grew up around the monastery, an undertaking as lucrative as it was pious. To pray for the salvation of all mortals, living and dead, the monastic community, with hundreds of daughter houses throughout Europe, released a boundless stream of prayers to the Heavenly Father. Otherwise, an impressive silence reigned in the monastery, and monks were forced to communicate in sometimes unfathomable sign language. The sign for a woman was the same as that for a trout: an almost sensual stroking of the forehead with the index finger from one eyebrow to the other.

The liturgical aesthetic was echoed in the increasingly beautiful design of Cluny’s own abbey church. Three buildings followed each other in rapid succession, and the third remained the largest church in Europe until the construction of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Artistic creativity and monastic religious expression went hand in hand, and thanks to the international network of daughter houses and pilgrim churches in 11th-century Burgundy, these cultural forms spread across the continent. Europe embraced Romanesque architecture with enthusiasm. Older church buildings, the ceilings and roofs of which were usually made of wood and easily caught fire, made way for larger places of worship erected with massive stone walls and fitted with small windows. The pillars were connected by means of stone arches and ribbed vaults, thus allowing for larger interior spaces in which separate chapels could also be built – the success of the monastic life required more and more altars. For the first time, the exteriors of the churches were also ornamented, giving the facade in particular a most imposing vitality. As Glaber wrote: ‘It looked as though the very world was shaking itself to take off its old age and to reclothe itself in all areas in a white cloak of churches.’

The power of Hugo

It was mainly under the guidance of Abbot Hugo, who was elected in 1049 and led the order for 60 years, that Cluny made a name for itself and became known even in the far reaches of Portugal, Scotland and Italy. Hugo’s intelligence and authority reflected on the entire monastic community. After King Philip

I of France was excommunicated for adultery in the autumn of his years, he began to worry about his spiritual welfare and requested permission to enter the monastery. His only condition was that he be allowed to keep his crown. But Hugo was adamant: without distancing himself from worldly glory there would be no room for his royal cousin at Cluny. When William the Conqueror asked him for monks to staff his English monasteries, the abbot refused despite the handsome remuneration, and he did so because he feared his brothers would not be able to regulate their way of life in the same spirit of independence. It would easily take as long to pray a couple of rosaries as it would to list all of Hugo’s international achievements. The illustrious abbot wore out several popes in his long career, and he always maintained a direct line with Rome. He accompanied Bruno Egisheim, who had spent a night at Cluny as a pilgrim on his journey to the Vatican, and was present when Bruno donned the tiara for the first time as Leo IX. Pope Urban II was also steeped in the spirit of Cluny, and when he called for the First Crusade on November 18th 1095 during the Council of Clermont with the words ‘Deo to volt!’ (God wills it), Hugo of Cluny stood approvingly at his side. Finally, Pope Paschal II a former brother of the mother house, also aligned his policy with the great abbot’s favourite themes. Hugo’s network supplied much-needed support for a thorough reformation of the church. More than ever, celibacy for clerics a Christian marriage for the laity became two fundamental precepts. He also banned the sale of ecclesiastical offices, and lay-people were not allowed to interfere in religious affairs. The Peace of God movement, which first emerged in southern countries, only reached full bloom when Cluny agreed to support it. Soon, lords of the castle and knights from the northern Rhône valley, Burgundy the Franche-Comté and even from the regions north of Paris where the bloody tradition of the faihitha had never gone out of fashion – agreed to comply with the imposed rules for peace. The Holy See was firmly grounded in the Ecclesia Cluniacensis. In fact, over the course of the 11th century the Catholic Church was being governed from Burgundy as much as it was from Rome. But that didn’t stop the great Hugo from searching for his bed of straw every night to humbly sleep among his monks.

Bernard and the beatific harvest…

From 1100 on, the worldly success of the Benedictine order provoked growing criticism. Shouldn’t the monks stick to their own affairs within the walls of their monasteries and leave the world to its own devices? Wasn’t that how the Cluniac

monks got started in the first place? Wasn’t it the king’s job to guarantee peace in his kingdom? Cluny’s affluence and splendour also came under fire. Shouldn’t modesty be a Catholic virtue? Could it be that the order had become far too rich?

The strongest opposition came from Burgundy itself. In Cîteaux, scarcely a hundred kilometres from Cluny, an abbey with even stricter observance was consecrated in 1098. Driven by Bernard of Clairvaux, a Burgundian born and bred, the Cistercian order would eventually unite more than 700 daughter houses within its fold. At a time when money and corruption were on the rise in church circles, the ascetic example of Cîteaux exerted ever greater fascination. Soon the Catholic world found that it could follow two opposing paths, two ways that led from and to Burgundy: a religiosity moved by beauty that was nourished, by liturgical ceremony and dazzling churches, and a mystical passion that relied on the joys of poverty and asceticism, Cluny as opposed to Cîteaux, Hugo versus Bernard. More than ever before, Burgundy of the 12th century had become the beating heart of the Respublica Christiana

Bernard, unlike the followers of the great Hugo, honoured not only the ora but also the labora of Benedict’s Rule. There were no serfs as there were in Cluny; the Cistercian brothers themselves put their hands to the plough. There was something particularly Burgundian about this physical doggedness, however. In 1110 the monks planted the first grape vines on the stony subsoil of a nearby slope, and they did their utmost to create as beatific a drink as possible. Was there a more perfect counterpart to spiritual labour than to harvest the blood of Christ by the sweat of one’s brow? The Cistercians continued to plant their vines until thousands of acres were put into service. Gradually they improved their production methods, which had made little progress since the arrival of the Romans. It was a labour-intensive enterprise, but wasn’t time something that the monks had in abundance?

They built a stone enclosure that served to defend their grape vines from the far too aggressive pigs, boars and deer. It also protected the early vines from the wind, and they thrived from the stored heat that the stones gave off at night. In 1212 this Clausum de Vougeot – the walled grove of Vougeot – was reported in a document, named after the adjoining village. And perhaps the abstinence-loving Saint Bernard once celebrated Mass with wine that would one day become the celebrated grand crus of Burgundy. ‘Take this, all of you, and drink from it: for this clos-de-vougeot is my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.’

The Meursault and Clos de Tart wines, renowned for both their name and their finish, also came to full maturity thanks to the daughter houses of Cîteaux. The temptations of alcohol gave rise to the requisite moral dilemmas, and one of the monks once asked Bernard how the Rule of Saint Benedict could be reconciled with the love for Bacchus. ‘By not drinking more than one hemina a day’ was the answer given by the spiritual leader. This ancient Roman measurement was the equivalent of 0.27 litres, one small carafe to get you through the day. In short, enough to modestly quench your thirst but not enough to cause you to nod off during the intoning of the psalms. And as an extra test of abstinence, the monks slept above the wine cellar at night. Despite the severity of Bernard, who refused the position of archbishop when it was offered him in order to stay on as abbot, the order of Cîteaux ended up following the same path as Cluny and became one of the wealthiest religious organizations in Europe. Their inspiring power shrank as their treasuries filled and their administrative ambitions grew. The affluent Cistercians were a contradiction in terms. Few of their abbots were inclined to reject the bishop’s mitre, and they built magnificent Gothic cathedrals that were a far cry from the sober, modest edifices their order had once so fervently promoted.

Extract from The Burgundians – A History of 1111 Years and One Day, Bart Van Loo; Head of Zeus (London) 2021. Reproduced with kind permission of the publishers.

A Saintly Job (But Someone’s Got to do it...)

Matt Kramer (1990)

Chambertin, the Saint Among Wines

Matt Kramer introduces Burgundy’s most consistently highly performing and revered red wine – inhaling the aromas of which, he finds, is a nearreligious experience.

No wine is more symbolic of Burgundy than Chambertin. It connotes capillarybursting pleasure, the red wine of red wines. It has the unequivocal imprimatur of Napoleon Bonaparte, who somehow has since acquired the aura of having been a wine connoisseur. He was nothing of the sort. But he did drink Chambertin, which accompanied him on all his campaigns. He also watered the wine considerably. In certain circles, to this day, this exaltation of Chambertin by Napoleon is approbation like no other.

Napoleon’s abilities as a taster aside, the fact is that Chambertin is the longest-running hit in Burgundy. In this, one includes Chambertin Clos de Bèze. Technically, the vineyard assigned the name ‘Chambertin’ is a parvenu compared to that called ‘Clos de Bèze’. Clos de Beze is said to have been established in 630, after Duke Amalgaire gave the site to the Abbey of Bèze. It was only in the 1200s, so the story goes, that a local peasant called Bertin who owned a strip of land that is, in effect, an extension of Clos de Bèze, decided to plant it to vines. Thus, was born Le Champ de Bertin, or Chambertin. This is the hoary tale, and so far, nobody has effectively debunked it.

French wine law, ever respectful of past usage, distinguishes between Clos de Bèze and Chambertin. Clos de Bèze may be sold simply as ‘Chambertin’, but wine from the Chambertin vineyard proper may not append the name ‘Clos de Bèze’.

Chambertin at its best is Burgundy’s strongest statement. Unlike the common misconception, it is not a heavy wine, although it can fairly be said to be fleshy. It should be full, intense, deeply coloured, and luxuriantly rich and involved. Actually, Chambertin is not the most extreme wine among the eight grands crus of Gevrey-Chambertin. Mazi-Chambertin is more forceful, almost

brutish in its amplitude. Latricières-Chambertin is lighter, and consequently displays more apparent finesse. Ruchottes-Chambertin can be silkier.

So why is Chambertin accorded the rank of first among equals? The answer is similar to that offered in explaining the singularity of Volnay ‘Caillerets’ or Meursault ‘Perrières,’ namely, that Chambertin consolidates more attributes than any other. It has almost as much sheer flavour as Mazi, but with the refinement of Ruchottes. It delivers this with as much finesse as Latricières. It is an amalgam and an amplification of all the virtues of Gevrey-Chambertin. If it were human, we would call it ‘saintly’.

Chambertin, the Saint Among Wines

From Making Sense of Burgundy by Matt Kramer; Morrow & Co 1990 (New York)

Caption to come Rum voluptaectis sinveri tatus, cone ipsaeptur maionsed eum eium es alitatur alibustium quist et quatiisti aut peri officil et ipsunt quo temped ulpa nam que quisser orporit ioriatio

Hooded stone statue in the Chateau de Gevrey Chambertin, in Burgundy

Hugh Johnson (1992)

The Godforsaken Sixties

The last half century has seen the greatest transformations in wine in its 8,000-year history. Hugh Johnson takes a fictional snapshot of the way things were in Burgundy in the 1960s, before everything changed.

The rusty cannon gives the Moutardes’ yard, divided from the village street by iron railings, its faint air of a comic opera set. It was last fired in 1964, when a cloud the colour of a decomposing aubergine and exactly the size of the vineyards of Muligny, hanging poised above the slopes of Chassard, the next-door commune, began to roll ominously towards the Clos du Marquis.

Père Moutarde had towed the weapon into the vineyards behind a borrowed tractor, loaded it with a canister of grape-shot of the vintage of 1815, levelled it at the heart of the threat, and plucked up his courage to apply the taper. The explosion was thunderous. Nobody in Chassard was sure whether what clattered down on several roofs was a flurry of hail or straying grape-shot. The cloud rolled on, menacing but still costive, over Muligny and three more communes before suddenly dumping its humbug-size hailstones on the scruffy oakwood on the hill above Beaune.

The oaks were shredded; not a leaf was left. But in Chassard relief for the spared vines was tempered by unneighbourly feelings towards Monsieur Moutarde – indeed towards Muligny as a whole. The two villages had never exchanged more than civilities; not in two thousand years. One must not put too much weight on the cannon incident; it was merely a symbol of the rivalry that had existed since the Romans.

Things were different then, in the early ’60s, in several ways. For a start, nobody had any money – or if there was any cash in the mattress it meant a harvest mortgaged to a merchant in Beaune.

The way the Moutardes made wine had changed very little since the Middle Ages. The most evident progress lay in the vineyards, which since phylloxera had been far more uniform than before: orderly rows of grafted vines that got a good

dusting of sulphur and a bright blue spray of bouillie bordelaise as often as the weather and Monsieur Moutarde’s energy and resources determined.

The vats in the cuvier were Napoleonic, the barrels in the mossy cellar dark with indeterminate age. Only the basket-press on its iron wheels definitely bore some relation to the Industrial Revolution.

Père Moutarde had a little cache of bottles in a corner of the cellar; no labels, but dates written in chalk which stood up very badly to any handling. In any case he knew the positions of all the bottles, whose vintages stepped back with irregular intervals to before phylloxera and his grandfather’s death. To drink one of them was exceptional. The family’s daily drinking came in litres from the cave cooperative.

In fact, the Moutardes had little to do with their own wine at all. They were farmers, on a tiny scale, who picked their grapes, put them through a sort of grinder that tore off most of the stems, then piled them in a vat and waited for the heady stinging smell of fermentation to fill the barn. Then twice a day the younger male members of the family climbed the ladder to the open top of the cuve, wearing only shorts (and sometimes not even these), gripped the edge firmly and lowered themselves in. Their combined weight was sometimes barely enough, even with a fair bit of bouncing, to break the thick raft of skins and stillwhole grapes buoyed up on the surface by the fizzing fermentation below. Once you got through into the warm half-wine the idea was to turn the fragments of raft upside down and tread them back in. This way none of the goodness, the colour and flavour of the grapes, would be lost.

Three weeks or so after harvest, with the weather distinctly chilly, the fermentation was finished; it was time to empty the contents of the vat into the barrels below, after washing them out energetically with a length of chain to scour the inside and endless cold water from the well.

That was almost the last the Moutardes saw of their wine. Before Christmas the négociant called, tasted each barrel, told them how bad business was, and named a price. In January a lorry came round, parked beside the cannon, and hoisted the barrels up to take them to Beaune.

Sometimes in good years (meteorologically and financially) Monsieur Moutarde would decide to keep a small barrel in the cellar, taste it from time to time with a neighbour, and at the end of three or four or even five years laboriously round up and wash enough bottles to hold all the dark fragrant liquid. Most of these he would distribute round the family, whose vineyard it was