IF ONLY WALLS COULD SPEAK - Blancpain

ART DE VIVRE
NO ONE PERSON FULLY MASTERS
THE VEXING COMPLEXITY OF THE
Winston Churchill, always one to turn a
phrase, conjured the description “a
mystery wrapped in an enigma”. He was not
speaking of wine, but he easily could have
been describing the world of French burgundy.
No one person fully masters the vexing
complexity of the burgundy region. Take for
example the famous Grand Cru vineyard of
Clos de Vougeot. There are nearly 100 different
owners of separate parcels within this
single vineyard, producing wine under different
names, and, most importantly, no two of
these wines, each bearing the same vineyard
name, are exactly alike. To the diversity of production
(each producer reflecting the style,
approach and talent of the wine maker and
caretaker of the vines) adds the year to year
vintage variation, and one confronts an exceedingly
complex matrix of wine quality and styles
ranging from profound, ethereal, earthy to,
BURGUNDY REGION.
Mounir Saouma “Lucien Le Moine“
sadly in a few cases, thin and mediocre. And
this is the complexity reflected in just one of
the dozens of vineyards that comprise the
Côte de Nuits and Côte de Beaune.
Finding great burgundy is a quest to unravel
the complexities of the region and to latch
onto producers dedicated to quality. Over the
last 30 years, this quest increasingly has been
a search for domain wines, that is, wines
whose origins exist entirely under “one roof”,
so to speak. These are wines where the owner
of the vines, raises the vines, controls the harvest,
conducts and controls the vinification
and, then finally, bottles the finished wine. The
emergence of such domain wines represented
a remarkable revolution in burgundy.
Previously the region had been dominated by
large houses called “negotiants”, who purchased
wine already in barrels, trusting in the
raising of the vines (“élevage”) and vinifica-
tion of others. The negotiants with their substantial
commercial size performed a valuable
service for small wine producers. They removed
the distribution and sales burdens
which many small producers felt unable to
bear. With their purchases of much of the production
of the entire region, the negotiants
became the principle source of burgundy for
the consumer.
Unfortunately, the negotiant business
model often did not result in wines of distinction.
Their identity hidden and, by reason of
often long-term purchase contracts, insulated
from substantial commercial risk (or reward),
the vintners who actually made the wine had
reduced incentives to excel. Also contributing
to mediocrity was a risk averse predilection of
the negotiants. Many did not want wines that
excelled. They wanted “safe” wines that
could be easily sold. Finally, the negotiants