Don Kinnan, CSS, CWE, and the lead instructor for the French Wine Society’s new Master Burgundy Certificate program presents an incredible in-depth seminar on the wines, soils, climate and history of the Côte d’Or.
2. Côte de Beaune
18 miles long
Production:
1.9 million cases
71% Pinot Noir
29% Chardonnay
Origin of the world’s
most famous
Chardonnay wines
Includes seven of
the nine white
Grands Crus
4. Wine nerve center of Burgundy, population
22,000, a walled fortress town.
Cote d’Or’s third largest wine commune, after
Gevrey-Chambertin and Meursault.
42 Premiers Crus, no Grands Crus.
Home of the Hospices de Beaune.
5.
6.
7. Soil variation on the Beaune slope is not
extreme and exposures are similar.
Wine styles vary in a much narrower vein.
A broad definition of Beaune wine style would
be plump, succulent, fruity, with a rich grapey
quality.
18. 28 Premiers Crus, only red wines
produced.
Ranks 3d in red wine production among
the villages of the Côte de Beaune .
Vineyard has a high % of active
limestone interacting with its clays.
Electro-magnetic proper ties of the clays
are similar to those of the Côte de
Nuits.
19. Vines: 795 ac, incl 301 ac Premiers
Crus
Wines: 142,889 cs, incl 49,778 cs
1er Crus
No Grands Crus.
Red wines only.
20. The Volnay slope is steeper, more rocky, and
the soil is redder in color. Lower down, in
Rugiens Bas, the subsoil is Argovian limestone,
covered with a thick band of marly, calcareous
debris.
Further down, the marl is mixed with an iron-
rich oolite, becoming more clayey.
23. Knights of Malta own vineyards in AD 1207.
Philip the Bold owns Caillerets and drank Volnay
wine at his coronation in AD 1328.
Louis XI siphons entire 1447 vintage into his
personal cellar.
Louis XIV (the Sun King) records himself as
“amateur of Volnay”.
