Today we were going north of Beaune into the Côtes de Nuits, Nuits-Saint-Georges is the major village here, sitting just up from the Hill of Corton. We did a tour of the hallowed vineyards around Vosne and Gevrey, gazed at the plots belonging to the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti whose wines are as legendary as they are mythical. I mean they do exist, they are not fictional, but the chances of Mrs L and I ever coinciding with one are virtually nil. I remember them being sold in Waitrose in Canary Wharf in the early 2000s. Would that I had bought some at that point but alas. Instead of ingesting wine we soaked in the scenery, the sense of place - this is genuinely a pilgrimage for some. For my part I wouldn't take it that far, but I adore the entire area and am committed to sampling as many of its wares as I can. Lunch was a picnic at some convenient benches near the Mairie looking out towards Malconsorts and La Tâche. I have two bottles of the former, and zero from the latter for it is a monopole of the DRC. It's not exclusive necessarily, you don't have to be a member of some secret society. I have a credit card and I could go and buy one from Berry Brothers in London this weekend if I so chose. Neither are they especially scarce as something like 20,000 bottles are produced in a normal year. The issue is simply unaffordability for all but a tiny tiny minority of the population. In fact I am not sure that many people actually drink them at all and instead treat them as investment vehicles. Whatever it is that drives demand means that the 2006 is £5,700. That's for a single bottle. Even if money were no object that just seems and outrageous thing to do, to blow such an amount on a few glasses of liquid. Imagine the other things you could do, the places you could go, the good you could do?
Our first visit after lunch was at Domaine Rion, one of two Domaine Rion's on a short stretch of road just south of NSG at Premeaux. I was not sure which it was, and then the dreadful thought occured to me of what if I had booked our visit at the wrong one? It would be easy to do. Such are the laws of succession in France that Domaines have been repeatedly split up, combined through marriage, split up again, a brother takes this, the other brother takes that. Some keep the Domaine whole up the death of the mother or father, it is not uncommon to have one sibling doing the farming and the other doing the vinification for instance. Common family names in Bourgogne include reams of Moreys, Vincents, Colins, Magniens and Bachelets, but I had not been prepared for two Rions right next door to one another. Fortunately the one we wanted, Domaine Michèle et Patrice Rion, was both the one we turned up to and the one we had made an appointment with so all was well.
Great visit with Florence opposite the walled vineyard Clos des Argilliere and tasted through the range of wines, I think from 2023. At one stage Patrice came in, so very nice to meet him. This is what I love about Burgundy, you can actually talk to the people who make the wine. From afar Burgundy might have a reputation of extreme stuffiness and wealth, and it is true that the wines can be obscenely expensive, but almost every single wine-maker I've met at their domaine has been a down to earth farmer more than anything else. M&P Rion is one of my favourite producers, their simple Bourgogne Rouge is from a vineyard near Chambolle called "Les Bons Batons" and produces the kind of tart red-fruited wine I really enjoy. The range of Nuits-Saint-Georges is altogether more serious and will take much longer to come around. Although the prices at the cellar door were excellent versus the UK it made no sense to buy many as storage at home is so limited and these would take up valuable space for years. The way I operate is that the ageing of wine takes place at the merchants I buy it from, and then as the drinking window approaches that is when I get it delivered. But Les Bons Batons doesn't need storing, it is good to go virtually straight away, and so a case of that came back home with us.
Next stop was Le Grappin, recently moved from Savigny to bigger premises in the Hautes-Côtes. This is an up-and-coming area in Burgundy, with climate change a new area that is viable for growing grapes, indeed it does not (yet) suffer the extremes of heat from lower down. Previously grapes wouldn't really ripen, now it is game on and more and more producers are expanding their holdings into this area. As the land is many times cheaper than the Côte d'Or this is also an opportunity for new winemakers to buy land, plant vines or otherwise acquire vineyards and more space. This is what Emma and Andrew at Le Grappin have done. They don't own their own vines but with temperatures in the mid-30s when we visited they were quite happy with that situation. Instead they buy in grapes and manage the process from thereon in. She is English, he South-African, we were introduced by my mate Neil, first to their wines in the UK, and then to Emma herself who he knew as fellow wine nerd when she lived in Kent. Their new premises up in the Haut-Côte are centered around a deep cool cellar of the sort that is hard to find these days, and will be the ideal place for Andrew and Emma to make wine. He is a thoughtful man, entirely unpretentious, a believer in letting the wine do the talking and for the process to be as simple as possible for the land to express itself, working with small parcels of bought-in grapes. It's a double-edged sword of course, and a source of fruit can disappear, as had happened with some of what we tasted. In one instance the vineyard had been pulled up and replanted, in another the owner had died and the descendents had decided to take a different path and so somebody else now gets those grapes. A great shame for what Andrew and Emma make is quite wonderful. We tasted a fair few on top of a barrel - they do not have, nor want, a fancy tasting room. They don't want their name on the gate, and even their online presence is decidedly minimal. It's not an effort to create a cult of mystery; they just want to work hard and make great and expressive wine. That is exactly what they are doing, and it's exciting wine. I detest the word "vibe", but I felt here like I felt at Benda in Montalcino, and that's a good thing.
That evening we had a dinner reservation at the Maison du Colombier in Beaune. Food good, wine list incredible, but I think we were clocked as foreign and dumped in a room with inconveniently low seating and alongside a group of earnest West-coast Americas who were 'making it' by coming to Burgundy. Deeply irritating people, extremely vocal, highly opinionated, each trying to out-cool the other. Young and hip professionals enjoying their ten days of annual leave. I do not begrudge them this, but the timing was unfortunate from our persepective and it did not make for a fully relaxing evening. For those thinking that two people consumed a bottle each we did not, and at least half the Vosne-Romanée came home to London with us the next day. Restraint is my middle name.
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