Burgundy, Je t'aime

So, what's the deal with you and Burgundy? (asks the fictional customer)

So, so glad you asked that question. Well, simply put, Burgundy is, without qualification, the greatest growing region for wine grapes in the world. Does it always produce the greatest wines? No. But it always has the potential to do so. Are all Burgundy wines good? No. But they all have the potential to be. Burgundy struts from vintage to vintage, the envy of the wine world. It's tiny, sinew-like Golden Slope, the mere mention of which turns producers from other regions green with terminal covetousness, produces wines that the rest of the world have always considered to be the benchmarks of perfection (even the Bordelais will begrudgingly admit that a great White Burgundy has no rival in the world, much less from a White Bordeaux).

In Burgundy, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay are King and Queen. But that's not why I, personally, love Burgundy. Yes, Burgundy wine is great because it is a true vin de terroir, it's character coming from a singular and gifted climate and soil speaking through single-varietal wines. Yes, Burgundy is the most intoxicating, compelling wine to smell and drink on the Planet. But Burgundy is also great because it derives from a particular and historical human temperament. And for me, it is the cultural endowment which, above-all, makes Burgundy, and makes it great.

Because The Burgundians are the hicks of France. Rather, nowadays they're the Beverley Hill Billies of France, with money in their pockets to burn on brand new German cars. But at their core they are, and will always be, a people of the land. Down to earth, proud of their rough hands and their rolled R's and their obsession with excess-especially when it comes to food and drink.

Last March I was up in San Francisco for the annual grand tasting of one of the great importers of French wines in the country. I was still a smoker at the time (very a-typical in the trade these days...), so I was in and out, making my rounds of the parking lot every hour or so, trying to be inconspicuous lest one of my colleagues happened to espy my dirty and palate-ruining habit. And I'll let you guess with whom I shared the majority of those smoke breaks...The Burgundians of course. Monsieur's Mortet and Perrot-Minot to be more specific (look them up), two of the greatest producers in Burgundy at the moment. I only wish I spoke more French...but I caught enough of what both of them were saying, to me and to each other, and the gist of it was this--Americans are a boring, tightly-wound, overly health-conscious lot that need to lighten up and have more fun (and, of course, buy more Burgundy). They were dying inside, being at this stuffy, useless event and couldn't understand why these stupid Americans liked this sort of thing.

I understood. Each time they finished their smokes, both men would unceremoniously extinguish the unfiltered cigarettes with their heels, take a deep, frustrated breath, and walk back into the fray together, with reluctance and irritation on their faces. As if to say: You people have missed the whole point. We make great wine because we love to make great wine, and cannot imagine doing anything else. We do it because our Father's did it, and their Father's before them. We do not do it so that we can travel to America and be fawned over by you people and told we are gods. We like making a nice living from the sale of our wines, and our prices will be outrageous for as long as you allow them to be by continuing to buy them...but even if we could only sell our wines for a few dollars a bottle, we would still be right here, doing what we're doing, making great wine and drinking it with great food and good company.

And I guess it's just that right there, that's why I love Burgundy--it's that peculiar and singular smugness of a French Hick deriding the rest of the world for being too healthy, too boring, not drunk enough. And ultimately, too, too serious. There is one thing above-all that a Burgundian is deadly serious about--his land and his wines. But he is only serious because he knows that without them, the good life comes to an abrupt and sober end.