Winophilia

Pardon my dose of history, but some brief background information is necessary to explain the jigsaw puzzle that is the typical Burgundy cru, or growth. Following the French Revolution, vineyards previously owned by the Church and the aristocracy were confiscated and auctioned off, mostly to wealthy speculators who in turn subdivided and resold them. The parceling of vineyards was accelerated by the French laws of inheritance established by the Napoleonic code, which ended primogeniture and required property to be equally divided among all heirs. 

The result is that today’s typical vineyard is carved up among multiple owners. Thus there’s really no single wine called Vosne-Romanée Les Suchots:  two dozen or more growers and négociants (i.e., merchants) offer a wine labeled Vosne-Romanée Les Suchots every year. And these many bottlings normally vary in quality from supernal to downright mediocre.  Knowing the grower (or the name of the estate) is job #1 for the wino seeking to get his or her money’s worth from this generally pricey category. READ MORE »

What’s up with Bordeaux prices?  Some of these 2009s are insane.  Why do the famous names seem to cost 10 or 20 times as much as the rest?

If you have the impression that the price gap between the most famous names and the literally thousands of other Bordeaux châteaux is more extreme than in any other category of wine, you’re right.  Here’s how it happened. READ MORE »

First, a brief word on the actual appellation system as it applies to the red wines of Bordeaux.  All Bordeaux wines are entitled to the basic appellation Bordeaux.  Bordeaux Supérieur is a slight step higher.  Bordeaux from districts known for special quality carry the name of their appellation on the label.  While seven appellations—Saint-Estèphe, Pauillac, Saint-Julien, Margaux, Graves, Pomerol and Saint-Emilion—are most familiar to long-time claret lovers, lesser-known districts such as Moulis and Listrac in the Médoc and Fronsac, Canon-Fronsac and Côtes de Castillon on the “right bank” (of the Gironde river) can also produce excellent wines, generally at much lower prices.  In fact, many vineyard owners in the swankier districts have been buying up choice parcels in some of these so-called satellite appellations, and it’s clear that the soils and microclimates in some of these spots are capable of producing superb wine. READ MORE »

The wines of Burgundy, reds as well as whites, are classified into five categories based upon the quality of their terroir (all the factors that contribute to the distinctiveness of a particular site; please refer to my earlier post on this subject). This hierarchy of vineyard sites has been established over literally hundreds of years. While wine romantics like to believe that this pecking order is based on a given site’s ability to produce wines of outstanding complexity and individuality, a more important original factor may have been far more prosaic: the ability of the site (owing to its soil, exposition, drainage, natural protection from heat and cold winds, and so on) to ripen its fruit on a regular basis. READ MORE »