BURGUNDY - MY PARTICULAR PASSION

A great burgundy can leave you lost for words. It is beyond the power of adjectives and superlatives to nail it to the page and whenever I come across such a wine in a formal tasting I scribble “not for spitting” before putting down pencil and paper to enjoy it fully. One man who kept writing at this point was Evelyn Waugh who, in a memorably purple passage from Brideshead Revisited, just about managed to capture its essence.

The central character of the book, Charles Ryder, was being entertained to dinner by Rex Mottram at Paillard’s Restaurant in Paris in the 1920s. Ryder chose a bottle of Montrachet 1906 followed by Chambertin-Clos de Bèze 1904. As the wine took hold his thoughts took flight: “I rejoiced in the Burgundy. How can I describe it... For centuries every language has been strained to define its beauty and had produced only wild conceits or the stock epithets of the trade.” For Ryder the wine was “serene and triumphant” and, when he came across it again years later, “it had softened and faded in the intervening years, but it still spoke in the pure, authentic accent of its prime…” I know how he felt.

Burgundy appeals both to head and heart and thus, to be fully appreciated, it must be tasted objectively and then subjectively. You cannot keep it at arm’s length and try to be unaffected by it. That is a waste of time and wine. You have to buy into it and doing so will bring enchantment and frustration, like any other affair of the heart. Don’t fall into the trap of tasting simply by numbers – some day a robot will be built that can do it better than we can. So, once you have sniffed and sipped and swirled and spat and made all your notes and assessments then sip again and swallow and truly get to know the wine. Embrace it, be exultant, be frustrated, but don’t sit there being cool-headed and objective while sagely opining: “Mmh… I’ll give this one 18.5 out of 20, or perhaps 19 with a fair wind at its back.” That is to miss the point altogether.

SOME QUOTES FROM RECENT ARTICLES

“And remember, not all Burgundy is ruinously expensive. The trick is to look for a basic wine such as a Bourgogne Rouge or Bourgogne Blanc from a good producer. Beware the impulse purchase, decided upon after a quick sip of a wine. Far better to seek out those wines that you have drunk and enjoyed with lunch or dinner. (Don’t forget to use your mobile phone to photograph the label – it makes searching for a wine afterwards so much easier.)” Read more...

“Try to dawdle along the side roads rather than roar along the RN74. Stop in the villages and explore them on foot. To do the same in the vineyards a bicycle is ideal and by these means you will gradually come to appreciate the sense of place that is so important in Burgundy. In no other region is terroir so highly prized or spoken of in such reverential terms. Some cynics pooh pooh it as nothing more than a load of French bunkum, but once you have planted your feet on the ground and raised a glass of Gevrey or Chambolle or Meursault or Puligny to your lips, you will be convinced. Believe me, you will.” Read more...

Built by the Cistercians over 450 years ago the Château du Clos de Vougeot sits hunkered down amongst the vines of its eponymous vineyard, a foursquare and forbidding testament to their industry. There is no architectural decoration to speak of, no flights of fanciful design whose only purpose was to catch the eye, no Disney-esque embellishment à la the Loire Valley. Read more...

I was gratified to note that I had not committed any outrageous howlers but also reminded (yet again!) of the folly of making sweeping generalisations about Burgundy vintages, winemakers or vineyards. Nowhere resists easy categorisation like Burgundy and anybody who tries to pigeon-hole it and reduce it to a series of trite comments and spuriously attractive ratings is on a fool’s errand. It is far more complex, and hence rewarding, than that. Read more...