It was about this time, too (if not, indeed, before), that there appeared in Burgundy a lowborn rival of the Pinot, the prolific and inferior Gamay. Planted in the fertile lowlands at the foot of the Côte, this “most evil and disloyal vine” yielded “très grande abondance de vin,” but a wine so bad, in the words of a fourteenth-century chronicler, that it was “full of very great and horrible bitterness, and becomes all stinking.”
The battle between Pinot and Gamay lasted five hundre years. Essentially, it was a battle between quality and quantity, between the authentic and noble wines produced on hillside vineyards from the shy-bearing Pinot, and cheap, common wines made from the productive Gamay on the plain. Thanks to the French wine laws of 1937, the Pinot is now definitely in the ascendant, and no wine containing Gamay can legally be sold as Burgundy, except as “Bourfraud, they say, is as old as the devil, and much of what is shipped to America as Burgundy, even today, is certainly not worthy of that venerable and honored name.
The essential problem, from the Gamays that were use to “tromper les étrangers” before Columbus was born, to some of the magnificently labeled “Pommards” that many of us have found disappointing since the war, is a simple problem. It would have delighted Adam Smith. It is a problem of supply and demand. Everyone wants Chambertin—there are seventy acres of true Chambertin in the world; one year out of three, at best, ranks as a great vintage; in the most favorable of years, an overall production of 10,000 cases is a magnificent crop, and there are autumns like 1945 when a September hailstorm will destroy in fifteen minutes all that a peasant vigneron has laboriously created in twelve months. Great Burgundy, as long ago as 1400, was considered a wine for “notre Saint Père le Pape, Mons. le Roy et plusieurs autres seigneurs.” The population of the world may double and its wealth increase a hundre times over—Chambertin will remain Chambertin, a closely planted little hillside of tiny, not very productive vines. And, if you please, Pinots.
Good Burgundy, therefore, is never cheap, and no one has ever made much money, let alone a fortune, out of the good Burgundy he has produced or bottled or sold. We in America perhaps got a false impression during the 1930's when you could buy a case of Clos de Vougeot for the price of a ringside seat at a prize-fight, and drink Romanée Conti at ＄4 or ＄5 a bottle. This is no longer the situation and may never be again—it was based on a rate of exchange—and the great wines of Burgundy will always be for the few, not necessarily for notre Saint Père le Pape, or Mons. le Roy, but for those who take the trouble to fin them, and realize that they are bargains at whatever price is asked for them in the wine marts.
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