The Wine Classification System Of Burgundy - Explained

Hello bonjour and welcome to a new Altiwine Exchange video, this channel where we explore and taste together the wonderful world of fine and rare wines. This is part 2 of our 6 part series exploring the wine wonders in Burgundy, France, so we learn together here, step by step, everything that you need to know about the world of fine and rare wines, after we had last week a general overview of the wines from Bourgogne, as we call them in French. You can catch up on this episode, that episode right here. Today we start getting into a little more detail, talking about how the different classification levels in Burgundy can help you understand the quality of what you're buying and tasting. So let's get right into it. Of course, you've all heard about Premier Cru and Grand Cru, even though there's some confusion sometimes because they don't mean the same thing everywhere in France, so it can be a little bit confusing, but we'll talk about those in a minute. You probably also have in mind what is a village appellation, because it's in the title, it's a village, and many are very famous, Marceau, Pomar, Von Romanet for example, but there's also a concept that's very important to understand Burgundy wine properly, and that's the notion of regional appellation. Essentially, when they ranked the vineyards in Burgundy, they based the whole classification on the terroir, which is basically to sum up the quality of the soil. Some villages and their surroundings have some fantastic but specific soil qualities that make them great to make wine. So the good vineyards around a great village are granted the name of the village on the label. This is the village appellation. But Burgundy is a relatively large region, and every village doesn't have its own appellation, because some villages are a little less remarkable. That's as simple as this. Also, some vineyards near top villages aren't that great, because they're lower down the hill, because they're closer to the riverbed, so the soil is just not as good for viticulture. So they are not good enough to make, say, a Marceau, Chardonnay wine, even though they are technically near Marceau. So some vineyards are like that. Those vineyards are not good enough to make the great village wine, but they're good enough to make a very good Bourgogne White. So all of these vineyards that are in less prestigious areas fall into what is called a regional appellation. Those are such AOPs or AOCs as Bourgogne Rouge, also called Bourgogne Pinot Noir, there's also the Bourgogne Blanc, the Bourgogne White made from Chardonnay, but also the Bourgogne Aligoté made from Aligoté grape, or Marcon, Marcon Village, Coteau Bourguignon, or the Haute Cote de Bordeaux, Haute Cote de Nuiz, and of course, the Crémant de Bourgogne for sparkling wines. Those are, let's say, more generic appellations encompassing broader vineyard areas. Wines made under these can be blended from many different vineyards in different areas. That's how some larger brands make a Bourgogne Pinot Noir for example. But a small producer that happens not to be near a prestigious village, can still make excellent terroir-driven wines from his vineyards, and it can still fall into a Bourgogne. So it's not necessarily always a lesser quality. It's not an absolute reflection of a lower quality, is what I mean. But of course, if a producer and his wine is made under a village appellation, well, the wine is, generally speaking, going to be more expensive, because it's a smaller production area. There's less of it. And let's say there's a better chance that it's going to be of better quality as well, because the soil is very good there to make wine. That's what the classification is all about. So villages wines are, generally speaking, slightly superior to more generic regional wines. But remember, that's not always necessarily true. There are 44 village appellations in Burgundy, including all of the prestigious and familiar names that we know, the Chablis, Meursault, Pouligny-Montrachet, Chassagne-Montrachet, the Pommard, Vaughan-Romanais, Gevrey-Chambertin, Nuit-Saint-Georges, and about 35 others. In future videos, we'll get back to some of the differences between villages, like between Meursault and Chablis for example, absolutely fascinating. So those wines from villages are made from vineyards around the corresponding village, so they are scarcer and more expensive. Within these village areas, some spots are even better, and that's the Premier and the Grands Crus we'll talk about in a minute. Everything else is simply the name of the village as the appellation that you see on wine bottles. So a Meursault wine can be a blend of different vineyards around Meursault, or it can be a single vineyard as well. Some producers may have identified single vineyards that make fantastic wines, but that are not Premier Crus. They are simple village wines, yet the producer may choose to add the name of the vineyard or the cuvee on the bottle to differentiate it. Some fantastic single vineyard wines are made with a lot of love, a lot of care by producers, even though they are just village appellations. But sure enough, generally, the best vineyards in the best villages have been classified in the past as either Premier Crus or Grands Crus. All of the 44 villages that have their own village appellation do not all have Premier and Grands Crus vineyards. Typically, the less famous villages of the Marconnet, that's a sub-region to the south of Burgundy, don't have either Premier Crus nor Grands Crus. Many villages that have excellent vineyards, but only have Premier Crus and no Grands Crus, just because they don't have the top of the top, the crème de la crème of the best vineyards of Burgundy. Even prestigious villages such as Mercuret, Givry, Pommard, Savigny-les-Bonnes, or even Meursault don't have Grands Crus. In the end, only a handful of villages have Grands Crus vineyards, I mean, more than 5, but I think it's only 12 villages, including, of course, those that we know, Vaux-ne-Romanais, Gevrey-Chambertin, Vougeot, Alox-Corton, Opulini and Chassagne-Montrachet. In total, there are only 33 designated Grands Crus vineyards in Burgundy, most of which are very small. I'll link to a video that links all of those 33 Grands Crus vineyards if you're interested to learn more in the video description. We will talk into more details about the Grands Crus wines in an upcoming video in our Burgundy wine series that you've just discovered right now, so make sure to stay tuned and subscribe to the channel to follow along the journey and the learning about those fantastic wines. That's going to be it for today. Thanks for watching. If you do have a Burgundy wine, a village, a winery, a cru, I'm very curious, let me know in the comments. I would love to have your input, your insight, do you know a valuable, great value wine from Burgundy? I would love to know your thoughts here. I hope you have a better understanding now of the different classification levels of Burgundy and what they mean, and I will see you soon in the wonderful world of fine and rare wine. Cheers!