Burgundy Pinot Noir Varieties

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Mark Middlebrook and I'm here in the Paul Marcus Wine Cellar, and in this segment I'm going to talk about the four part classification of burgundy quality. This is an official thing in French wine law, and printed in very official ways in the labels. The most general type of Red Burgundy, is simply called Bourgogne, of course this means burgundy wine. And the grapes for Bourgogne can come from anywhere in Burgundy, any of the allowed vineyard areas in Burgundy, so it's the most general, least specific, in general least expensive style of Burgundy, but still can be a wonderful Pinot Noir, more or less everyday drinking experience. The next classification is called the village wine. And with the village wine you'll see the name of the village in or near which the vineyard is located. So this particular one is Chevrey Chambertin, so that's the name of the village where the grapes come from. In general, the village will give a certain character of the wine, the soils, in general, in and around that village will be a certain type, the weather climate will be in a certain way, of course they'll be micro differences in different areas of the village, but the idea behind labeling a wine after villages is something about that village that really gives its own character to the wine, and these will cost a little bit more than the regular regional Bourgognes. The next more specific classification will be a Premier Cru wine from a particular village. So you'll still see the name of the village, Chevrey Chambertin, the same as the previous bottling, but now you'll see Premier Cru, which means first growth, one of the better vineyards in Burgundy, and you'll see the actual names of the cru, of the vineyard. So this says Premier Cru, Lavaut St. Jacques; so the name of the vineyards, since the middle ages anyway, has been Lavaut St. Jacques. And again, the idea is, in even more specific ways than the village itself, that vineyard has a particular character, based on its soils, and its micro climate, and so on. And finally the top tier of all Burgundy's are called, Grand Cru, the greatest growth, so the greatest classified vineyard in Burgundy. And again, this is a system that was set up, or began to be established by monks in the middle ages. It's a very, very old system based on a lot of research into the types of wines that came from the different small vineyard plots in Burgundy. And there you will see just the name of the vineyard, Charmes Chambertin, and they're relatively a small number of Grand Cru vineyards in Burgundy, and these are definitely the most expensive, most prized, most age worthy wines, and also wines that you generally want to age. I generally drink the Bourgognes; the Bourgognes are the simplest wines, pretty much unreleased for the first few years. The village wines can be very good when they're first released, but generally a little bit of benefit from a little bit of bottle aging; Premier Cru is a bit more, and the Grand Cru you really want to stick them in your cellar and forget about them for at least 5 or 10 years before you drink them."