A century of progressThe only wine Napoleon allowed at his table was Chambertin. He too was following doctor's orders.The 19th century saw the wines of Burgundy build an identity. Their image was of highly coloured red wines, opulent and robust, lordly wines which bespoke good living. It was only later that that Burgundy's white wines achieved their glorious peak. Virtually the whole of the wine trade was now in the hands of the négociants and the practice developed of selling wines in bottle rather than in barrels. A glass factory was established at Epinac to supply the trade. Burgundy's export trade developed enormously. Her wines reached Russia and America. When Jules Verne's heroes reached the neighbourhood of the Moon, they toasted their success in a bottle of Nuits. Growth in importance of direct salesThe period immediately following the Great War saw families dispersed and inheritances partitioned. Wine was hard to sell. Small-time growers began buying up plots of vines.The growers gradually became serious players. Many of today's important domaines trace their origins to the period 1920-1930. And in the next decade, faced with economic difficulties, their owners started selling direct instead of through the négociants. This form of trading – in wines which carried the name of the domaine which produced them – gradually acquired more economic weight and a growing market share. "Climats"Early attempts to classify "climats" (named and delimited plots of wine-growing land) according to the quality of the wines grown on them were made in 1827, again in 1831, and, more especially by Dr. Lavalle in 1855. In 1893 Danguy and Vermorel published the first complete description and classification of the wines of the Beaujolais, Mâconnais and Chalonnais.In 1847, Gevrey obtained the right to call itself Gevrey-Chambertin. This crafty way of adding value was imitated by a number of Burgundian wine villages, thus Chambolle-Musigny, Puligny-Montrachet, and even Solutré-Pouilly and Romanèche-Thorins. The phylloxera crisisAn aphid crossed the Atlantic and started killing our vine-stocks wherever it met them.It was active in Burgundy in the 1870s and 1880s. Most of the vineyards were destroyed. People called it "the black disease". Attempts to combat it with carbon disulphide made some headway. But it was the United States, which, having sent us the disease, sent us the cure. The vine-stocks were replaced with naturally resistant American stocks and these were then grafted with scions of traditional French grape varieties. There was no loss of quality. Within thirty years, re-planting was complete. But now everything had changed. The vines had formerly been planted in disorganised clusters and annual regrowth was done by layering of suckers ("marcottage"). The introduction of vines planted in orderly rows and trained to wires radically altered the landscape while permitting the use of horse-drawn (and later motor-driven) machinery. Though vines will grow anywhere in Burgundy, only the best terroirs were replanted. So the foundations were laid for quality-driven viticulture. Vins de table virtually disappeared and order was instilled into the selection of grape varieties and the choice of appropriate sites. The Co-operatives
The co-operative wineries were a response to a period of economic slump. After a number of regroupings, they are mainly sited in the Chalonnais and Mâconnais districts but in the Côte d'Or we find the Cave des Hautes-Côtes and the La Chablisenne winery in the Chablis district. Together, they account for 12% of all sales, of which 64% are retailed through the négoce sector and 24% by the producers themselves. In 1975, the sparkling Crémant de Bourgogne was officially recognised as a controlled appellation (AOC). The legal limits of "wine-growing Burgundy", first set by Charles VI in 1416 as extending from the bridge of Sens to the Mâconnais were formally defined in 1930: it took in the three departments of Côte d'Or, Yonne and Saône-et-Loire plus the area around Villefranche-Sur-Saône in the department of Rhône. The Beaujolais district has been autonomous since 1989, but a prestigious section of it (Moulin à Vent and Saint-Amour) lies geographically within the confines of Burgundy. The most important event in the 20th century was the official recognition, classification and regulation of controlled appellations of origin (AOCs), starting in 1930. It brought order and fair-dealing to the market and extended real protection to the consumer. 1934 saw the creation of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, a wine society designed to promote the wines of Burgundy and which supports or organises a number of important annual events. Its example has been widely copied. Another annual event, and one of world importance, is the Hospices de Beaune wine auction. This, together with festivities such as the Paulée de Meursault and the Saint-Vincent Tournante, prove that Burgundy has no lack of creative energy. |
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