At some point in everyone’s wine journey it becomes clear that there is something special about burgundy. Even before my wine studies began, I understood that “burgundy” was shorthand for something impossibly fancy. I bought a few here and there with mixed results. As I got into it, I heard wine lovers talk about it with reverence, wistfulness, glee, and even lust. Yes, lust. Wine folks are fond of saying that a good bordeaux is cerebral, while burgundy is sensual. In our podcast, my good friend JT Robertson and I introduce the reasons burgundy is so special and provide a framework for getting into these wines that become a lifelong obsession for many.
As a starting point, it helps to understand that no place is more famous for growing pinot noir and chardonnay than Burgundy. Like most old world wine regions, wines from Burgundy are called by their place of origin and, because wine laws in Europe generally require wines from a specific place to be made from the grapes most suited to that place, a wine labeled “Bourgogne” (French for “Burgundy”)—or labeled with the name of a village or vineyard in Burgundy— is pinot noir if it’s red or chard if it’s white, with very few exceptions.
