Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [67]
The Côte de Nuits gives us the most famous Pinot Noir red wines in the world. The wines are worthy at all three top-quality ranks—village, premier cru, and grand cru. Chances are you have heard of some of the famous appellations before. They are:
Although the Côte de Beaune grows mostly Pinot Noir red wines, it is most famous for its great white wines made from Chardonnay. They are:
And here are the famous Côte de Beaune red appellations:
The final classic Burgundy type comes from the Chablis region. Here are its appellations:
These classic Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines are the benchmarks against which all other Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays made worldwide are measured—high standards, indeed. What are they like? While it is true that the flavor styles of these wines vary from one village and vineyard to the next, sorting through these subtleties isn’t necessary for you to buy and enjoy Burgundy (although Burgundy fanatics think it is fun to do exactly that). The overall styles are:
Reds All of the Côte d’Or’s classic Pinot Noir wines are aged in oak barrels, with more oak—longer aging and newer barrels—applied to the best (premier cru and grand cru) vineyards. The greater oakiness builds on the intensity (and cost) of the wines as you move up the appellation rankings. The Côte de Nuits reds from the northern half of the Côte d’Or are generally fuller-bodied and more powerful than their Côte de Beaune cousins grown farther south.
Whites Chablis whites are lighter-bodied than their Côte de Beaune white wine counterparts. This is partly because the Chablis district is cooler, giving less ripeness and body. The comparative coolness also gives them higher acidity. Chablis is often described as lean and racy. The final factor in the body equation is oak. Although there are exceptions, Chablis is traditionally not aged in oak barrels. Côte de Beaune whites, on the other hand, are usually both barrel fermented and barrel aged, which makes them taste richer and much more intense and full-bodied—the model for so many blockbuster Chardonnays from California, Australia, and the rest of the wine world.
Finally, there is the effect of the appellation rank on style. As you go up the rankings in status (and price), the quality potential increases. This is due in part to the vineyard itself (a better site can grow better-quality grapes), and in part to the crop yield, which by law has to be lower for the higher appellation rankings. To the taster, all of this typically translates as fuller body and more complexity in the wine.
What It Means to Be Classic “Burgundian”
We know that Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are modeled after the classic white and red Burgundy wines, but are they “Burgundian”? In my experience, the answer is: rarely. This is because at the center of any discussion of Burgundy and “Burgundian” style are our old friends earthiness and terroir. We discussed these in Chapter 5, in our exploration of the style comparison between Old World and New World wines.
To review, earthiness in wine refers to traces of aromas and tastes in the earthy family that are interwoven with the fruit and other style components. The earth words most often used in wine descriptions are dusty, flinty, minerally, chalky, mushroom, truffle (the fungus, not the candy), forest floor, humus, wet leaves, tea leaves, barnyard, and manure—a pretty amazing list. Closely related to the earthiness notion is terroir—the idea that the particular earthiness associated with a specific vineyard can be expressed year after year in its wines. And no wine region is more emblematic of these two concepts—earthiness and terroir—than Burgundy.
To the uninitiated, this style can seem strange, or even off-putting. Yet it is an almost cultlike devotion to this style that unites Burgundy lovers.