For a while I felt that drinking Santenay was like visiting your family of wild cousins and marveling that they are related to you. Was that really Pinot Noir....or was that a Cotes du Rhone I was drinking? It seemed that there was simply too much coarseness and clunkiness for the wines to be from the Cote d'Or. But wine-making has really improved in Santenay over the last decade or so, and more and more I've been finding bottles of wine that truly satisfy my cravings for great Burgundy. Pay just a little bit of attention, and you can find those bottles too.
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Today we start exploring the Edges of Burgundy with Saint-Aubin. This is a series that focuses on villages of Burgundy that are less heralded despite producing world class and age-worthy Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
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Is Burgundy going the way of Bordeaux? Prices certainly are going up every year. The top producers’ wines are now out of reach for the vast majority of us. In famous villages (Vosne Romanée, Chambolle Musigny), even relatively unknown producers don't come cheap.
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Regnie and Chiroubles have a couple of things in common. They both border Morgon, but, unlike their famous neighbor, they are considered among the lightest and most forward-drinking of the 10 Crus.
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We deal with two AOCs in one focus this time because, as the names suggest, these are two Crus that really ought to be discussed together. The most important distinction between the two Crus is in the names themselves: Brouilly is on the flatland; Cote de Brouilly is on the adjacent "Cote," or slope. If you know anything about wine, you can guess which produces the more interesting wine. While Brouilly produces fun, light, fruity juice for drinking young, often out of a jug at a simple bistro in Paris, while Cote de Brouilly makes serious wine. Both Brouilly and the Cote de Brouilly have similar soils — a mix of granite, clay, and limestone — so really we have a natural experiment that proves conclusively that the superior drainage and exposure offered by a cote results in better wine.
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If Julienas sounds a bit like Julius Caesar, it’s because they were actually making wine here 2000 years ago and Julius did in fact give the AOC its name (as well the name of its principal village, also Julienas, and another village in the AOC, Jullie). When I learn stuff like that it gives me great hope that quality wine production will continue in the great vineyards of France despite climate change.
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Morgon is blessed with a greater number of quality producers than any of the other Crus.
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This visit was definitely a highlight on a recent trip to France. To get to Thierry's, we made the short walk -- perhaps 30 paces -- from the winery of Auguste Clape, where we were privileged to taste with three generations of Clapes. But that's for another blog post. Today the topic is Thierry Allemand, and especially the two interesting lessons that Thierry took it upon himself to teach us on that day.
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