Red Wines of the Côte d'Or

So, four or five hundred years ago, they celebrated the excellence of Burgundy in the taverns and cabarets of Paris: “If I had a gullet five hundred ells wide, an the Seine ran this good wine of Beaune, I would go down under the bridge, stretch myself out, and I would let the Seine run down into my belly.”

Heart-warming and joyeux, heady, big of body, magnificent and Rabelaisian, this is Burgundy. Surely not, as Maurice des Ombiaux has said, a wine for a man with a col and lazy stomach, since those who make good Burgundy are about the most industrious vintners of France, and Burgundy in turn, as Francis Bacon might have said, maketh a warm man.

I am always astonished when people compare Burgundy with Bordeaux, as if the two were similar, for they are as different as noon and twilight. In Gevrey-Chambertin or Beaune, when there is an honored guest or a great occasion, the linen nappe and the great crystal glasses are on the table by noon, and one is well into the coq au vin and the best wines by one-thirty. In Bordeaux, such meals are served by the light of chandeliers, and the greatest of the vieilles bouteilles only make their appearance in their gleaming decanters two or three hours after sundown. In Bordeaux you eat sole frite with a little white wine at lunch, thinking of dinner, and in Burgundy you take an omelette, or the simplest grillades, with mineral water at dinner, remembering lunch. The most celebrated poet of Bordeaux, Biarnez, wrote of the chateaux and the wines so dear to his heart in cool and measured Alexandrians reminiscent of Racine. Burgundy is celebrated in bawdy tavern songs.

The immemorial and indestructible and universal fame of red Burgundy is based on the russet-brown soil of one narrow, not particularly fertile hillside, and on the incomparable quality of one extraordinary grape. The hill, of course, is the Côte d'Or, or “Golden Slope,” of which I shall have more to say later. The grape is the Pinot Noir.

The origin of the Pinot is unknown; it is probably as old as France. In the first century A. D. a vine, “one of several grown in Gaul… the smallest and the best,” was identified and described by the Roman agronomist, Columella, in terms that make it reasonably certain that he knew what we call the Pinot, and had tasted its wine.

By about 1400, in any case, these “best and most precious wines of the Kingdom of France,” as Philip the Bold calle them, had become celebrated throughout the civilized world. The Dukes of Burgundy were as proud of the title, “Lords of the Best Wines of Christendom,” as they were of their dukedom, and in 1366 the Italian poet, Petrarch, could even charge that the Papal Court, then installed in Avignon, refused to return to Rome because of its fondness for the wines of Beaune.

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.

The Côte d'Or, from the standpoint of wine, is a hill or chain of hills, running from north to south along the western edge of the Saône valley, from Dijon to Santenay, some thirty miles in all. You can see the vineyards from the windows of a Paris-Riviera train—a narrow green ribbon of vines, hardly ever a mile wide, sloping up from the valley to the oaks or pines or outcroppings of yellow rock along the crest of the Côte. Every two or three miles, nestling among its vineyards, is a sleepy little village with a world-famous name.

Some fifteen miles south of Dijon a break in the slope divides the Côte d'Or into two more or less equal halves, an each half takes its names from the most important of its little towns—the northern Côte de Nuits from the village of Nuits, the southern Côte de Beaune from the town of Beaune. With one or two minor exceptions, the Côte de Nuits produces red wines only, and these, on the whole, are bigger and more robust, greater and longer-lived, than their charming sisters of the “Slope of Beaune.”

The following is a list of the wine-producing communes and their more important vineyards, not in order of excellence, but from north to south. Before each vineyard are a number of asterisks which give its traditional, although not official, ranking, three of them standing for téte de cuvée, and so on accordingly. After each vineyard, I have given its area in acres, and if one remembers that 150 cases of wine is an above-average yield for an acre of Pinot vines, it will be apparent how extremely small the production of Burgundy of the first quality is and undoubtedly always will be.

Cote de Nuits

Larrey and Chenôve. Now suburbs of Dijon. Most of the former vineyards have been subdivided into building lots, and no great loss, either.

Marsannay-la-Côte. A cooperative cellar produces a pale and pleasant little vin rosé of some local reputation but not much consequence.

Fixin. This is the northernmost village that makes red wine worthy of the name of Burgundy, and a pretty village it is, too, with a Romanesque church, and a lovely old Romanesque manor house set down in the center of its best vineyard, the Clos de la Perriére (any vineyard that calls itself a “clos,” according to French law, is supposed to have a wall around it). This wine is an old favorite of mine, delicate as a Musigny, fragrant, beautiful, rather fragile, with a wonderful old-fashioned label not much larger than a large postage stamp.

**Clos de la Perriere (12)

*Clos du Chapitre (12)

Brochon. Interesting largely because its best-known vineyard, Crais-Billon, or Crébillon, belonged in the eighteenth century to the Jolyot family, and supplied a nom de plume to the French poet, Prosper Jolyot, or “Crébillon.”

Gevrey-Chambertin. “Nothing,” wrote Alexandre Dumas peére, “makes the future look so rosy as to contemplate it through a glass of Chambertin.” This incomparable wine, accounte the king of Burgundies (Romanée Conti being the queen) has been celebrated by the writers (Thackeray among them—although he suggeste drinking it with bouillabaisse) of a half-dozen centuries and as many countries; it was the favorite of Napoleon.

Chambertin, without the Gevrey-, and without other modifying name, must come from one of two vineyards (Chambertin proper or Clos de Béze) with a total area of some seventy magnificently situated acres, halfway up the slope and south of the village proper. The name, according to tradition, comes from champ-Bertin, or a field belonging to one Bertin, who must have lived very long ago indeed, since the vineyard has been calle after him since about 1200.

A century ago the village of Gevrey added to its name, by royal decree, that of its most famous vineyard, an became Gevrey-Chambertin. There are now a great many second-and third-rate vineyards (including about a dozen in the township of Brochon) legally entitled to this appellation, which has ceased to mean very much as far as quality is concerned.

On the other hand, in order to get a great wine from Gevrey-Chamber-tin, one does not by any means have to insist on a wine from Chambertin proper. Some ten of its other vine-yards rank among the loftiest aristocrats of the Côte d'Or—any one of them is capable of producing, in a favorable year, a wine worthy of Chambertin itself.

***Chambertin (32)

***Clos de Beze (38)

**Latriciéres-Chambertin (17)

**Charmes-Chambertin (31)

**Mazis-Chambertin (32)

**Ruchottes-Chambertin (8)

**Chapelle-Chambertin (13)

**Griotte-Chambertin (14)

**Mazoyères-Chambertin (48)

**Gevrey-Chambertin, 'Clos St. Jacques (18)

*Gevrey-Chambertin, les Casetiers (20)

*Gevrey-Chambertin, les Varoilles (15)

Morey-Saint-Denis. Overshadowed by its illustrious neighbors, Chambertin and Musigny, the village of Morey has perhaps received less than its due of celebrity, for a half dozen of its wines are of surpassing quality, big, sturdy Burgundies of great power an long life. In general, throughout the length of the Côte d'Or, the fuller-bodied wines come from the steeper vineyards, and Morey's best plots (the Clos de Tart, the Clos de la Roche, and the Clos St. Denis, from which the village takes its present name) are steep and high, and run back into the cliffs and stony outcroppings of the upper slope.

Bonnes Mares, one of the best climats of all Burgundy, lies partly in Morey and partly over the township line of Chambolle-Musigny to the south. The five-acre Morey portion is usually considered the better, but there are thirty-four acres of Bonnes Mares in Chambolle. The wine, in character, is nearer Musigny than Clos de Tart or Chambertin.

***Clos de Tart (18)

***Bonnes Mares (5 in Morey; 39 in all)

**Clos de la Roche (12)

**Clos St. Denis (5)

*Clos des Lambrays (15)

*Les Chaffots (3)

*Les Chabiots (5)

*Les Fremirèes (6)

Chambolle-Musigny. Like most of the other wine-producing villages of the Cote d'Or, Chambolle, in the nineteenth century, added to its name that of its most famous cru, and little wonder, for Musigny is one of the true Burgundian immortals, first in delicacy, first in finesse, and in certain years (like 1945) first in almost everything else. Gourmets have claimed to find in its bouquet the fragrance of eglantine and wild raspberries; suave, almost feminine in its appeal, it has its devotees all over the world.

The lesser wines of Chambolle-Musigny (there are some 400 acres under Pinot grapes in the township) have something of the same character and charm, and the best of them, such as Les Amoureuses, can be altogether remarkable. The Chateau de Cham-bolle-Musigny, by the way, is a building and cellar, not a vineyard.

***Les Musigny (25)

***Bonnes Mares (see Morey)

**Les Amoureuses (14)

*Les Charmes (15)

*Combe d'Orveau (12)

*Les Fuées (15)

*Les Cras (10)

*Derriere la Grange (2)

Vougeot. The stone wall of the Clos de Vougeot runs along the main Paris-Riviera road for nearly three-quarters of a mile; behind it, the 125 unbroken acres of this largest vineyar of Burgundy sweep back impressively to the Musignys and Echezeaux which bound the Clos on the west. The Château de Vougeot, with its enormous, venerable wine press and vast cellars, stands overlooking what were once its vines.

For the Clos de Vougeot long since ceased to be a single property, an today more than a score of producers have holdings within its walls. This means, of course, that Clos de Vougeot is no longer one wine but many, an there are surprising differences between bottles even of the same vintage. The wine as a whole fully deserves, however, its enormous reputation; lighter than the Chambertins and Richebourgs, it is a Burgundy of incomparable balance and distinction. Little wonder that French troops traditionally present arms when passing under its walls.

The originator of this pleasant custom of rendering military honors to a vineyard is said to have been one Colonel Bisson, a friend of Brillat-Savarin, who customarily drank eight bottles of Burgundy for lunch.

Like many another vineyard in the Côte d'Or, the Clos de Vougeot owes its origin to Cistercian monks an dates back to the year 1100. It remained the property of the Church up to the French Revolution.

The village of Vougeot consists of a score of houses strung along the Route Nationale, and apart from the Clos there are some twenty acres of vineyard, from which the wine is sol as “Vougeot.” A tiny fraction of this is white.

***Clos de Vougeot (124)

*Les Petits-Vougeots (15)

Flagey-Echezeaux. The wines of Flagey would be more popular than they are and perhaps as celebrated as they deserve, if they were not, to the average Anglo-Saxon, so nearly unpronounceable. Echezeaux, as a word, is certainly quite a mouthful, but it is also quite a mouthful as a wine, and well worth the trouble. The wines of ten vineyards, comprising nearly a hundred acres in all, go to market as Echezeaux, and quality-wise the name is one of the most dependable in Burgundy. Grands Echezeaux, the town's best vineyard, is separated from Clos de Vougeot only by a wall, an fully deserves the same exalted rank.

The Domaine de la Romanee Conti includes holdings in both Echezeaux and Grands Echezeaux, and bottles both wines under the Domaine label. As might be expected, they are impeccable.

***Grands Echezeaux (23)

**Echezeaux (in toto, 98)

Vosne-Romanée. Vosne (which rhymes with bone, for the s is silent) has been called “the middle pearl of the Burgundian necklace.” The average quality of its wines (there are some 425 acres planted to Pinot Noir) is probably higher than that of any other village of the Côte d'Or, and it includes what is certainly the most valuable plot of agricultural land in the world. This, peerless Romanée Conti, was bought in 1868 by the grandfather of the present owners for 330,000 gold francs, or ＄56,000 for five acres; it is worth much more today.

According to both custom and law, the wines of Echezeaux and Grands Echezeaux can be sold as Vosne-Romanée, their character being much the same, and the same producers, in many cases, owning vines in both communes, often only a few feet apart.

Of all the inner circle of great Burgundies, the wines of Vosne-Romanée are the most difficult to describe—an perhaps because they seem never to go to extremes but remain instead the archetype of Burgundy itself. Softer and less forthright than Chambertin, fuller than Musigny, richer than Vougeot, they have at their best an almost total absence of faults. But they have their positive virtues, too.

All of Romanée-Conti, all of La Romanée, all of La Tâche, plus considerable portions of Richebourg, Grands Echezeaux, and Echezeaux, now form part of a single property, the Domaine de la Romanee Conti, which estate-bottles everything it sells—consistently and deservedly for the highest prices brought by any re wines in the world. There are those who will tell you that these owe their unmistakable character and their prodigious quality to some secret of vinification, but I have visited the cellar, I suppose, twenty times, and I have never seen anything except goo grapes, old-fashioned methods, an magnificent wines.

Until 1946, Romanée-Conti, like part of Richebourg, was still plante with the old, ungrafted French vines and was cultivated exclusively by hand. These Vieilles Vignes Françaises were torn up after the 1945 vintage, and there will be no more Romanee-Conti of the old quality for at least a dozen or fifteen years.

La Romanée, La Tâche, and Richebourg, vineyards hardly bigger than good-sized truck gardens, are of the same superlative class: the Richebourgs are traditionally a little fuller and the wines of La Tache (after which Christopher Morley once named a book) a shade richer than the Romanée-Contis, although neither ever quite achieves the same perfection. There are fully a score of “lesser” vineyards which produce wines that deserve to be the jewel of any private cellar and the joy of any winelover's heart.

***Romanée-Conti (5)

***La Romanée (2)

***La Tâche (15)

***Richebourg (20)

**Romanée St. Vivant (24)

**La Grande Rue (3)

**Les Gaudichots (14)

**Aux Malconsorts (15)

**Les Beaux Monts (7)

*Aux Brulées (10)

*Aux Reignots (3)

*Les Suchots (33)

Nuits-Saint-Georges. The pretty little metropolis of Nuits gave its name to all of the foregoing, for we have been dealing with the Côte de Nuits, the smaller and yet the greater half of the Côte d'Or. Nuits itself is the last major wine-producing town of its côte, and by no means the least.

An enthusiastic nuiton once informed me that the American expression “OK” (which he pronounce O-Ki) unquestionably was derive from the vineyard Aux Cailles, in Nuits, the wines of which, he assure me, were very much O-Ki. He was both right and wrong, for a number of the wines of Nuits (including Aux Cailles) are altogether admirable. Next to the Chambertins, they are about the fullest of Burgundies, harsh in their youth, slow to come round, and never, shall I say, so voluptuous as the Musigny and the Romanées.

The familiar pattern of wine names in Burgundy becomes a little confusing when it comes to Nuits. A “Côte de Nuits” is any wine, generally a rather poor one, from the Côte de Nuits, not necessarily from the town of Nuits at all. A “Nuits-Saint-Georges” is any wine, quite possibly a mediocre one, from the township of Nuits. A “Nuits-Saint-Georges, Les Saint Georges” is a wine from the township's most celebrated vineyard. All of the following vineyard names (and they include the best) are preceded on a label by the township appellation, Nuits-Saint-Georges:

**Les Saint-Georges (19)

**Les Cailles (Aux Cailles) (10)

**Les Porrets (17)

**Les Pruliers (11)

*Les Murgers (13)

*Aux Cras (7)

*Aux Boudots (16)

*Les Vaucrains (15)

Premeaux. Until the strict, modern geographical limitations were set up, the wines of Premeaux were generally sold as Nuits-Saint-Georges, which they resemble in character, but the best of which they rarely equal. The following are worth looking for:

*Clos de Forets (12)

Clos de la Maréchale (25)

Comblanchien. If wine, women, an song, as the Burgundians would have us believe, are the desiderata of life, Comblanchien's contribution has been rather in the field of song than wine. Its wines are very mediocre indeed, but its quarries supplied the stone out of which the Opéra was built in Paris.

Corgoloin. I once saw a famous French wine taster, at a formal dinner, mistake a four-year-old Corgoloin for a Musigny aged twenty. I hope I am never caught out so badly.

Côte de Beaune

Ladoix-Serrigny. Its better wines are legally marketed as Aloxe-Corton, an its others are of no consequence. See below.

Aloxe-Corton. If you want to pass for a Burgundian, you will say Alosse, not Aloxe, but Corton is Corton in any language, a noble white wine, and the greatest red of the Côte de Beaune.

We shall leave the white wines out of consideration in this article, except to say that a Corton can be either re or white, but a Corton-Charlemagne only white, and that both are better than white wines called simply Aloxe-Corton, or Charlemagne.

The total area under vines in the township is small, considering the fame of its wines, and only the least and most inconsequential of these are sold as Aloxe-Corton. The others come from Corton's broad and magnificent hillside and are quite properly labeled Cortons, with or without a supplementary vineyard name. Big, bouquetés, long-lived, with a sort of autumnal richness when they are old, they are the Chambertins of the Côte de Beaune.

**(Sometimes merits***) Corton, so labeled or as:

**Le Corton (29)

**Corton Clos du Roi (26)

**Corton Bressandes (42)

**Corton Les Chaumes (6)

**Corton Les Renardes (37)

*Corton Les Grvès (5)

*Corton Les Perrières (27)

*Corton Les Pougets (25)

*Corton Les Maréchaudes (17)

*Corton La Vigne-au-Saint (6)

*Corton Les Languettes (18)

Pernand-Vergelesses. Most of the better wines of Pernand (they are fairly numerous and can be very good) are properly and legally sold under the name of their illustrious neighbor, Corton, and only one really outstanding vineyard is left to uphold the fame of Pernand:

*Ile des Vergelesses (24)

Savigny. Over the door of the Château de Savigny an ancient inscription, now barely legible, tells us that “Les vins de Savigny sont nourissans, thêologiques et morbifuges.” They are all of that and rather plentiful, too, for the township has over 900 acres under vines and produces a great deal of the wine ordinarily marketed as Côte de Beaune. A Savigny of a goo year is a delightful bottle nonetheless, fruity and what the French call tendre, of early maturity and relatively short life.

Another Savigny inscription states in Latin that “There are five reasons for drinking: the arrival of a guest, present or future thirst, the excellence of the wine, and any other reason that you can think of.” And in Savigny you do not need either a guest or a thirst.

There are few really outstanding Savigny vineyards, but Vergelesses, Marconnets, and Jarrons are considered the best.

Beaune. It has been said that Dijon is the capital de la Bourgogne an Beaune the capital du Bourgogne—la Bourgogne being the province, an le Bourgogne, the wine. And truly, Beaune lives for little else. With over 1,300 acres in Pinot vines it has the largest production of the Côte d'Or; it is the center of the Burgundian wine trade, its hospital is a winery, its venerable ramparts a honeycomb of cellars, and its mayor, almost invariably, a wine merchant. In addition, it is a most delightful old town, full of interesting buildings and famous for its good food.

The name Beaune is used in connection with wine in so many different ways that a little clarification may be in order:

A wine sold as “Beaune” may be red or white (very little white is made); if red, it must be made from Pinot grapes and come from one or more specifically listed vineyards in the township of Beaune. Some of these vineyards are very good, an some, of course, mediocre.

“Côte de Beaune,” unless this name is preceded or followed by another appellation in the same size letters, means exactly the same thing as “Beaune.”

A “Savigny-Côte de Beaune,” however, is not a wine from Beaune at all, but one from the neighboring village of Savigny; a “Pernand-Côte de Beaune” similarly comes from Pernand, etc., etc.

A “Côte de Beaune-Villages” is a blend of wines from villages near Beaune, but not from Beaune itself.

Owners of the more famous Beaune vineyards almost always indicate the superior origin of their wines by adding the vineyard name, as Beaune Feves, Beaune Greves, or Beaune Clos des Mouches.

The Hospices de Beaune (of which more later) is a charity hospital, whose endowment consists principally of vineyards; the wines from these vineyards, many of which are not in Beaune proper, are nevertheless sol as Hospices de Beaune.

As wines, those of Beaune, while rarely achieving supreme greatness, are among the most agreeable of Burgundy, soft, fine, well-balanced, with their full share of distinction. Here are a few of the more famous vineyards;

**Les Fèvs (11)

**Les Grèves (79)

**Clos des Mouches (62)

**Bressandes (46)

**Marconnets (25)

*Les Cras (12)

*Clos de la Mousse (9)

*Champimonts (41)

Pommard. No other Burgundian name, not even Chambertin, has acquire the world-wide fame of Pommard; to the uninformed, its name is almost synonymous with fine red Burgundy although, as one outstanding French authority has said, “more of this ‘Bourgogne-pour-tous’ is drunk every week the world over than is produce in ten years at Pommard.” The name is easy to pronounce and easy to remember, but its best wines are not equal to the best Volnays, and no better than the best Beaunes. The legal maximum production of authentic Pommard per year is hardly more than 100,000 cases, and if poor vintages and short crops are taken into consideration, the real output of goo Pommard is no more than a third as much.

If you want one of the best (an they can be truly excellent), there is one rule to follow: insist on a vintage and a good vintage; insist on labels that carry not only the name Pommard, but the name of a vineyard as well, as Pommard Rugiens, Pommar Epenots, Pommard Pézerolles; insist on a wine that is estate-bottled. They may be long to seek and hard to fin but when you find one, the chances are that it will be that wine, pur, loyal, vermeil et marchand, which was Pommard in the days of its obscure and honorable past. The best vineyards:

**Rugiens-Bas (15)

**Epenots (27)

**Clos-Blanc (11)

**Pézerolles (16)

*Les Argillières (9)

*Les Petites Epenots (51)

*La Refène (7)

*Les Jarollières (8)

*Les Chaponières (8)

*Les Rugiens-Hauts (19)

Volnay. A hundred rustic poets, in Burgundy, have attempted to celebrate the glories of their native vintages in rhyme, and many of these naive little verses have become part of their country's folklore. Thus, Buveur de Meursault, Ni vit ni meurt sot (A drinker of Meursault neither lives nor dies stupid); thus, En dépit de Pommar et de Meursault, C'est toujours Volnay le plus baut (Despite Pommard an Meursault, it's always Volnay that ranks highest); and thus finally, On ne peut être gai, Sans boire du Volnay (One cannot be gay without drinking Volnay).

This last is perhaps an exaggeration, but Volnay, which was a favorite of the kings of France before America was discovered, is a gracious and extraordinarily charming wine, soft and fruité and well-rounded. “C'est une très jolie femme très distinguée,” said a French friend of mine, and there is nothing I can add, except that a Volnay from one of the following will be more than ever so:

**Cailleret (36)

**Fremiet (16)

**Clos des Ducs

**Champans (28)

**Chevret (15)

**Les Angles (9)

**Les Santenots (see below)

*Bousse d'Or (5)

Meursault. Technically in the township of Meursault (which is internationally celebrated for its white wines) but traditionally and properly part of Volnay, are a few remarkable small vineyards which produce red wines. These are now legally sold as Volnay-Sante-nots, rather than as Meursault-Sante-nots, and some seventy acres are entitled to the name.

The tiny hamlet of Blagny, at the southern end of the great Meursault slope, has also produced some remarkable red wines in its day, but I have not seen or tasted any since a delightful 1929, which I remember with particular pleasure because (which is rare in Burgundies) it was both cheap and good.

Monthélie. Like Savigny, Monthélie is a village out of sight of the main road, hidden in a sort of pocket in the hills. It is nevertheless a name that an American wine buyer might put well toward the head of his list—nine times out of ten a Monthélie or a Savigny or an Echezeaux is a better value in red Burgundy than a Pommard or a Beaune or a Gevrey-Cham-bertin. In character, the wines of Monthélie are like lesser Volnays, fruity, clean, delicate, with good bouquet. Individual vineyard names are hardly ever used.

Auxey-Duresses. This is another village that merits more than it gets in the way of attention from people interested in sound Burgundy at a not-too-exorbitant price. In addition to a goo deal of extremely pleasant white, Auxey has two or three outstanding red wines, the best of which are sol as Auxey-Duresses and Auxey Val.

Chassagne-Montracher. A century an a half ago both Pommard and Volnay were very different from the ruby wines which we drink under these labels today. They were oeil de perdrix, or “partridge-eye” in color, like pale vins roses; and most of the wines of Meursault and Chassagne-Montra-chet were red.

Apart from the wines of two incomparable vineyards (Montrachet and Batard-Montrachet) most of the better Chassagne-Montrachets, surprisingly enough, are red even today. We rarely see them in the United States, but they are worth running down, particularly if they are estate-bottled an carry such vineyard names as:

*Clos St. Jean(36)

*Les Boudriottes (45)

*La Maltroie (23)

Santenay. Southernmost of the Côte d'Or villages, Santenay is another one of the rather obscure names worth remembering, for its red wines, no less than its whites, are worthy of the Burgundian tradition and great Burgundian name, and to be preferre twenty times over to the “Pommar du commerce” which we in America, alas, all too often receive.

The Hospices de Beaune

One of the most beautiful medieval buildings of Europe, the Hospices, or charity hospital, of Beaune, is the scene annually, usually in November, of the most celebrated wine auction in the world. That day, if the vintage has been good, all Burgundy is en fête; and the prices brought at the auction generally determine the trend of wine prices for the ensuing year.

Despite the fact that the wine is sol when new and delivered in barrel, the good name of the Hospices is almost never abused, and the wines are almost invariably better than others of comparable origin. To be a director of the Hospices is an honor indeed, even among the wine merchants of Beaune.

The Hospices were founded in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin, the wealthy chancellor of the Dukes of Burgundy. (Louis XI, his contemporary, remarked that Rolin could well afford to build a house for the poor, having made so many of them.) Be that as it may, in the five centuries since its foundation, the Hospital has received considerable endowment, much of it in the form of gifts or bequests of vineyard land. The vineyards, administered by the directors, produce the wines sold at the annual fall auction.

The product of each vineyard is auctioned separately, under the name of its cuvée, which is in most cases that of its donor, and the prices vary widely according to the origin, as well as the quality, of each wine. Here, listed more or less in the order which reputation, quality, and price have generally established, are the cuvées of the Hospices de Beaune, with the origin of each:

The Hospices vineyards total some 86 ½ acres, distributed as follows: Aloxe-Corton 8 ½; Savigny 8; Beaune 34; Pernand 3; Pommard 8; Volnay 8; Monthelie 2; Auxey-Duresses 1 ½; Meursault 13 ½.