Many people reach for the autumnal and wintry-feeling wines of Burgundy toward the end of the year and the holiday season, and it’s a reasonable instinct: Pinot Noirs with sensations of rock, field, and sweet fruit, Chardonnays of opulence in mineral gowns. However, part of Burgundy’s current problem in the wine world, both for the producers and for the drinker, is that its outlandishly famous name and perceived quality associated with it have often outstripped the actual quality of the wines being produced. Roughly 80,000 acres of vineyards exist inside this swath of land that runs only 160 miles from its north in the satellite region of Chablis to its south in the more cheerful and ruddy white wine department of the Mâconnais. This is an intense concentration of agriculture—indeed, a massive monoculture, with all of the problems of lack of biodiversity, resilience, and the use of intensive farming techniques that implies—in a very small overall stretch of land.

Here's why we think that’s a problem: there are 200 million bottles of wine produced in this tiny place each year by nearly 3,500 estates. This is a hard-to-conceive-of number of wineries in about 120 square miles. What it means is that there is simply no way that all of these estates are practicing meaningful, high-quality farming and winemaking. It also means there is no way at all that all of these 200 million bottles of wine are good, either from an ethical production standpoint or just from the way they taste. Being from a wine region of great terroir is no guarantee that wines of excellence, or even just decent wines, will issue forth. As in every other region of the world, how one treats the land and vineyards, along with production practices in the cellar, makes an enormous difference in whether or not the wines are merely inert products or if they have some life and energy intact, making them actually worth paying for and drinking at all. What is guaranteed is that every bottle you drink from Burgundy that takes the regional name—from any of those 3,500 wineries—will be more expensive by at least double than any other fine wine you might engage with in France, barring Champagne and Bordeaux.

Carlo Bavagnoli | 
Grape picker in French vineyard

If you are going to spend at least double, if not triple, on a bottle of wine because Burgundy’s marketers and champions have done their job since the 1980s, skyrocketing this once-humble medieval land of farmers and scholars into world fame, you might as well actually drink something of value and substance. Usually the way to do this is to actually avoid the most famous names here, as prices will be insanely inflated whether you’re looking at the name of a place or the name of a person. Just to give one example: if at a dinner party anyone is using the name ‘Montrachet’ to convince you that the white wine in their hand is worth the price they’ve paid for it, make sure they’re not confused. That one single vineyard’s Grand Cru name has been applied as a suffix to two entire villages and all of the vineyard plantings therein, in order to raise the overall perception of the quality of their wines (the villages of Chassagne and Puligny). This is a technique that has worked, because it confuses people. You can drink terrific quality, vineyard-specific Chardonnay from Burgundy for much fairer prices if you simply avoid the word ‘Montrachet.’ We recommend doing that. Same goes for the word (and actual village of) Chablis—there are probably ten or fifteen producers in that zone worth their salt. The other 430, instead, are probably not justified in getting the inflated price of the name Chablis.

Menu by Bouterin Dec 1998 |
James Beard Foundation

All of this is our primer on what the context in Burgundy actually is, as you reach for these northern French wines that evoke fall, fancy dinners, truffle and butter and snails and foie gras, turkey and ham and gravy and cheesy potatoes. We simply want you to make sure you get something from this region from the tiny minority of producers who care, who are tending their land with an eye toward human-scaled viticulture and personal wines. To that end, we’ve outlined a selection of five producers, running from ‘Fanciest’ at the top to ‘Least Fancy or Most Adventurous’ at the bottom, but each represents a real wine operating within its category as something worth your time. It’s best in Burgundy to shop by producer—tasting things from individual estates and winemakers to see if you like their hand. In addition to style, we’ve always begun by ensuring that each of these makers is either personally farming or purchasing organic fruit, as a bare-minimum practice when thinking about the overall deeply intensive treatment of land in Burgundy as a whole. Tasting notes are below to guide you!

FEATURED WINES:

Hudelot-Baillet 'Les Charmes' Chambolle-Musigny 1er Cru 2023 ($239)

The fanciest of what we have on offer. ‘Chambolle’ as a village has become a signifier of Pinot Noirs that taste like bursts of black cherries on the palate, with beguiling perfumes. We think this vineyard, ‘Les Charmes,’ which means exactly what you think it does, is in nice hands with Hudelot-Baillet. A formal wine, polished in its way, but made with care and not anonymous-tasting.

Domaine Rougeot 'Sous la Velle' Meursault 2023 ($150)

Likewise, the fanciest white wine we point out. We love Domaine Rougeot because they are situated in the middle of one of the three most important Burgundy villages there are, but they are a relatively young domaine and have recently converted all of their vineyard holdings to biodynamic farming, with some work by horse—an investment of time and expense that signals commitment to a better future in their region. The most full-bodied and regal of our Burgundy whites at the moment.

Domaine de Chassorney Volnay 2022 ($89)

An estate based in Hautes-Côtes de Nuits with a twenty-year history of organics, where the winery and wines are now owned and made as of 2022 by Aurélien Verdet. Medium-bodied Pinot Noir, with notes of currant, red berries, and silky, velvety tannins. A fine value for a village wine with a good background of farming in its vineyards and gentleness in winemaking practices.

Fiona Leroy Maranges Rouge 2023 ($99)

A relative newcomer, Fiona Leroy just began her domaine in 2017, with under three hectares of land that were in her family. She’s based in this lesser-known and undervalued red wine village of Maranges, and we love her style: much lighter and more ethereal extractions mean her wines reflect a sort of crystalline, mineral-focused expression of Burgundy in general. Real natural wine from the region and from a rising star.

O2Y ‘Catimini’ Aligoté 2022 ($52)

An exciting curveball; O2Y is a project actually based in the Jura from a French-Japanese friend duo. Since vineyard land in the Jura is highly limited, sometimes the team has sourced fruit from nearby regions and other fine organic farmers or natural winemakers whom they esteem. This Aligoté comes from a secret friend producer in Meursault, which means it’s from rather fancy terroir, but was vinified in the Jura in a rough and chilly cellar, with absolutely no additives of any sort. Mysterious and flinty, with notes of sparkly yellow and green; this is a white Burgundy marked with magical touches from the style of natural winemakers in the Jura.

SHOP THE COLLECTION: Burgundy