Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
sense once you learn that Philippe Starck
was the designer, and it contrasts with the
gleaming, functional winery and dungeon-
like cellars.
When you go downstairs, you leave the
21st century behind. These atmospheric
12th-century tunnels are large enough to
hold gala dinners and events; the older
ones are the most narrow and claustropho-
bic of all. Stacked barrels sit behind metal
gates, and you wish you had the key—for
here are the wines this area is famous for,
the legendary Burgundy whites, rich Char-
donnays with a thick viscosity, crisp acidity,
and complex minerality. These are wines
that live forever, the true essence of Bur-
gundy's
terroir
.
Château de Chassagne-Montrachet,
5 rue du Château, Chassagne-Montrachet
(
&
33/3/8021-9857;
www.michelpicard.
com).
(
Dijon (55km/34 miles).
L
$$$
La Maison d'Olivier Leflaive,
Place du Monument, Puligny-Montrachet
(
&
33/3/8021-3765;
www.olivierleflaive.
com). $$
Hôtel de la Paix,
45 rue Fau-
bourg Madeleine, Beaune (
&
33/3/8024-
7808;
www.hotelpaix.com).
France
317
Albert Bichot
Burgundy Group Therapy
Burgundy, France
“I bore people senseless. I bore myself.
Sometimes I talk so much about wine I see
their eyes glaze over and I realize I've
crossed over from a casual interest to a
complete and utter obsession”.
So remarks Sarah, the guide at a wine
tasting in a cave in Burgundy. The location
is the historic cellar of Albert Bichot in the
tidy town of Beaune, center of the legend-
ary Côte d´Or, or
golden ridge
. The caves
have an austere, atmospheric feel, not
unlike a dungeon.
Bichot is one of Burgundy's oldest wine
merchants, a family business that has
been in operation since 1831. The head-
quarters in Beaune was established in
1912, after Bichot acquired many other
wine houses in the wake of the phyloxera
blight. It is only one of Bichot's many
estates around France, but it is an ideal
place to get a handle on the famous Bur-
gundy wines. Though Beaune is in many
ways a modern city, its medieval town
center is thronged with Burgundy fanatics
in the summer. Many start or end their day
tours with a visit to Bichot or one of the
town's many other cellar tasting rooms.
Burgundy is a typical French wine
region, in the sense that there are no huge
flagship wineries to visit, but rather a mul-
titude of mom-and-pop operations, little
more than a cellar beneath a farmhouse.
Because of French inheritance laws, land
is evenly divided among offspring, which
means that each generation sees the land
divvied up more and more, until one per-
son might own two rows of vineyard and
little more. Bichot serves an important
role in this system: The firm buys up each
year's harvest of wine or grapes from sev-
eral of these small producers, then mar-
kets it all under its own venerable label as
genuine Burgundy.
The country lanes that spread out from
the city make up the
routes de grand crus,
passing towns with such venerable names
as Nuits-Saint Georges and Vosne Romanée.
Here you will see gangs of Burgundy lov-
ers poring over maps and pointing excit-
edly at different plots and appellations,
which vary remarkably in wine quality
depending on soil, slope, and shade. A
vineyard of
premier cru
and
grand cru
vines is greeted with hushed silence—this
