The Basics of Burgundy: Six Words to Know

I am approximately two months into my six-month-long Bourgogne Master-Level Course with the Wine Scholar Guild (WSG), and I am starting to switch from reading the textbook for the first time to reviewing the material I have learned so far in the course.

Burgundy can be complicated, fragmented and intimidating, but taking a step back, I have tried to think of a few foundational concepts that permeate the conversations around Burgundy that I would have liked to have known when I first started learning about this awesome region.

Here are six words to know to get acquainted with the basics of Burgundy.

#1 and #2 - “Lieu-Dit” and “Climat”

The WSG book defines a “lieu-dit” as “a parcel of land within a single commune whose traditional name recalls a topographical or historic particularity.” In the words of the WSET, “a lieu-dit is a named piece of land in the centralised land register.”

The WSG book defines a “climat” as a “precisely delineated parcel of land enjoying specific geological and climatic conditions that comprise the mosaic of Bourgogne’s classified crus.” Climats are registered with UNESCO’s World Heritage List and also the Institut National de l’Origene et de la Qualite (INAO), which is the body that governs and protects the identities and quality of French agricultural and food products, including wine. INAO presides over the appellation system (appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC)) and the protected geographical indication system (PGI) system in France.

Each of these words reflects the concept that a winegrowing site is the embodiment of the combination of climate, soil, orientation to the sun, elevation and history. The wines of Burgundy are composed of mainly Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and to a much lesser extent, Aligoté, and the thousands of lieux-dits and registered climats convey the Burgundian idea that each of these sites has a unique influence on the expression of these main grapes.

The concept of climats and lieux-dits as specifically delineated parcels originates from a 1,200 year-long period when the monks resided in and oversaw viticulture in the Bourgogne region from as far back as 510 A.D. The monks kept careful records of the winegrowing areas and classified and ranked the various plots according to their perceived quality.

The definitions of the two terms sound suspiciously similar, and climats and lieux-dits often overlap or diverge from one another. However, the easiest way to differentiate them (to me) is to think of climats as related to AOC laws and lieux-dits as tied to land registers. It should be noted that the hierarchy of the climats in the AOC system (regional appellation, village appellation, premier cru appellation, grand cru appellation, etc.) is not fixed forever, but climats are sometimes promoted or demoted based on quality, as determined by INAO.

In the Côte d’Or, the appellations are organized according to the names of the climats. For instance, Les Grands Echézeaux AOC is a climat located within the village of Flagey. Another example is the grand cru Clos de Vougeot AOC located within the village of Vougeot. Clos de Vougeot AOC is one climat, which contains approximately 18 lieux-dits.

Note that climats can be shared by certain AOCs. For instance, the climat Montrachet is located within both the villages of Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet.

Note, also, that in Chablis, there is only one grand cru appellation, Chablis Grand Cru AOC, which contains seven climats (Bougros, Preuses, Grenouilles, Vaudesir, Valmur, Les Clos and Blanchot).

#3 and #4 - “Marl” and “Limestone”

People often refer to certain soils of Burgundy as being “marl and limestone” or just “marl” or “limestone.”

According to “A Wine Lover’s Guide to Vineyard Soils” by Tom Stevenson on Tim Atkin MW’s website, marl is “a cold, calcareous clay-like soil (usually 50 percent clay content) that delays ripening and adds acidity to wine.”

“Calcareous” refers to material containing chalk or limestone, and according to Stevenson, limestone is “any sedimentary rock consisting essentially of carbonates.”

Why are limestone and marl important for Burgundy?

The combination of limestone and clay aids drainage, which is critical in wet conditions to prevent waterlogging the roots, which can kill the vine. The presence of clay in the soil mixture also aids water retention in the soil, which is essential in a region that does not permit irrigation for AOC wines. Global warming has caused a steady rise in temperatures in the region, which results in faster evaporation of water in the soils. In addition, with the increasing prevalence of drought, water retention in the soil is becoming an increasingly important issue.

Lastly, limestone and marl have a cooling effect on the growing environment. Generally, as temperatures in the growing environment increase, sugar accumulates at a faster rate in the grapes, which increases the final alcohol content in the wine, and malic acidity in the grape, which is one of the acids in the grapes that causes the tart taste in wine, degrades in the grape at a faster rate, causing overall acidity to go down in the wine. Acidity is an essential feature for balance in wine, as when the acidity is too low, wine tends to taste flabby.

Both Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are considered a “cool climate” grapes because they ripen early compared to many other grapes, the idea being that since they ripen earlier, they need a cool environment to restrain the pace of the accumulation of sugar and loss of malic acid in the grapes over a long growing season. Pinot Noir is particularly sensitive to high temperatures. When Pinot Noir is grown in growing environments that are too warm, the over-accumulation of sugar causes the aromas and flavors in wine to become jammy, the alcohol content to increase significantly and the grapes to lose the acidity necessary to keep the wines in balance. As a result, there are very few regions in the world where quality Pinot Noir can be grown.

Temperature in the growing environment is influenced by a number of factors, including the type of the soil. Generally, clay has a cooler temperature than stony rock and contributes to keeping the vineyard site cooler than, in contrast, large pebbles that radiate heat at night (e.g., galets (large pebbles) in certain Rhône Valley vineyards).

As a result, the presence of clay in the marl soils of the Burgundy region is one of the factors contributing to the slow ripening of the grapes, which may lead to wines that have more retained acidity to balance against the concentration of fruit, in addition to the restrained alcohol levels reflective of the Burgundy region.

#5 - “Monopole”

Due to the super-stardom of monopoles in Burgundy like Romanée-Conti and La Tâche, which are both owned by Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, monopoles tend to have a certain sexy mystique to them, but the definition is really much more pedestrian.

According to Wine Spectator, a monopole is “an appellation or other designated winegrowing region controlled entirely by one winery.”

There are no rules as to the size or age of the vineyard area to qualify as a monopole, so the word monopole does not provide any indication as to the quality of the wine.

The advantage of a monopole is that the identity of the producer and the terroir can become psychologically linked in the mind of the consumer. To many people, the style of the La Tâche AOC is basically Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

Further, when there is a limited area of production and only a certain number of bottles produced a year, the scarcity of the wine can create an aura of exclusivity, and as a result, higher prices for the wines on both the initial sale by the producer and the secondary market. As an example, only 600 bottles of Romanée-Conti were produced in 1945, and in 2018, a single bottle of this wine was sold for $558,000 at a Sotheby’s auction in New York.

However, when there is only one producer, one also has to wonder whether the wine itself is a full expression of the terroir itself or the producer’s vision for how to treat the grapes and the wine during the production process. Hint: The answer is probably both.

In contrast, when there are multiple producers within a winegrowing area, it is easier to discern patterns and similarities among the wines to help draw conclusions about the terroir of the winegrowing area.

Regardless of these considerations, many of these famous monopoles have become intertwined with the psyche of Bourgogne in the consumers’ minds and add to the glamor and romance of Burgundy.

Fun fact about DRC: Domaine de la Romanée-Conti is the only domaine in Burgundy that produces wine only from grand cru sites. Note that grand cru sites represent only 1% of wine production in Burgundy. Truly exclusivity on top of exclusivity.

#6 - “Combe”

Have you seen this word on wine labels?

Also spelled “coombe,” the WSG book defines “combe” as “short valleys...that cut deep into the hillside.”

Because that sounds a bit vague to me, in my own words, in Burgundy, combes are indentations, or dry valleys, in the landscape of the hills going down from west to east toward the main highway D974, which runs north to south.

When I was sitting in a tasting seminar at Clos Vougeot in September 2021, our excellent instructor kept saying the word “combe”, and my fellow and I kept looking at each other, wondering, “Comb?”, “Come?”, “What is he saying?” I had never heard of the term before, and my WSET Diploma book does not mention the word “combe” at all.

However, combes are particularly important in the Côte d’Or, and according to our Vougeot instructor, many of the premium climats are located near the mouths of the combes. Further, the Burgundians valued combes so much that certain combes have formal names, such as “Combe Lavaux” and “Combe aux Moines.” Wines located near combes are called “combe” wines, and certain climats such as Aux Combettes in Gevrey-Chambertin and Combe Bazin in Saint-Romain, featured above, are named after influential combes.

The combes affect the quality of Burgundy wines in a few ways. One of the ways is that the effect of gravity of the soils within the combes pushes geological matter down from the top of the western hills of the Côte d’Or toward the bottom and around the mouths of the combes, which increases the diversity of the geological matter in the soils.

Soil is a complicated topic in wine that rarely results in conclusive generalizations, but it is widely recognized that the composition of the topsoils and the underlying geology in different plots result in different expressions of wine, which recalls the concept of terroir and the system of the climats and lieux-dits in Burgundy, as discussed above.

Due to the movement of the topsoils through erosion over time down the combes, the sites at the bottom of the combes can have a mix of geological matter that is different from the soils in the surrounding climats or lieux-dits, which can contribute to different expressions of the final wine.

Second, the combes have a cooling influence on sites near them. The best vineyards in the Côte d’Or tend to have an eastern, south or a south-eastern orientation to the sun because the region of Bourgogne has a relatively high latitude, which results in a cooler climate and less sunlight than regions closer to the Equator. Due to the cool climate, the south-facing and southeastern-facing sites tend to get the most impact from the sun, which promotes ripening and therefore concentration of fruit in the wines.

Looking north from the bottom of the Côte d’Or, most of the high quality vineyards tend to be located on the western side of Highway D974. Further to the west of the grand cru and premier cru locations is the Hautes Côtes de Nuits and Hautes Côtes de Beaune, which, as the names imply, are at a higher altitude than the vineyards of the main Côte d’Or. The Hautes Côtes de Nuits and Hautes Côtes de Beaune tend to be cooler in temperature and are also fully exposed to the prevailing winds, while the vineyards in the main Côte d’Or are protected by the Hautes Côtes de Nuits and Hautes Côtes de Beaune.

The narrow valleys of the combes funnel cool air from the higher elevation areas of the Hautes Côtes de Nuits and Hautes Côtes de Beaune down toward the vineyards of the main Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune.

As noted above in the section about limestone and marl, temperature has a direct relationship with ripening and sugar accumulation and an inverse relationship with the retention of acidity. Since cool air flows through the combes, the sites near the mouth of the combes are cooler, and as a result, ripening is slowed down and more acidity is retained. Both factors are key to maintaining balance in wine.

While the cooling influence is beneficial for retaining acidity, a delicate balance of promoting the retention of acidity and promoting the ripening of the grapes is still required. For instance, the climat Aux Combettes in the southern end of the village Gevrey-Chambertin is surrounded by grand cru sites and has the same elevation as the grand cru Le Chambertin climat, one of the most recognized climats of Gevrey-Chambertin. However, Aux Combettes holds premier cru status, perhaps because it lies in closer proximity to Combe Grisard. One of the theories is that the closer proximity of Aux Combettes to the combe than the grand cru sites contributes to less ideal ripening and therefore less concentration in the wines than the surrounding grand cru wines.

As a side note: The Coombsville AVA in Napa Valley has nothing to do with “coombs” in this sense, which was named after Nathan Coombs, one of the early settlers of Napa Valley.

Did you learn anything new from this post? What other basics of Burgundy would you like to learn about next?

Comment below!