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’.

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