Wine Lingo
A Pair of Rivals

DISCOVER - September 15, 2009

Why would a cooper make two kinds of barrels, one holding 225 liters of wine and the other 228? Would a Bordelais admit that a Burgundian Pinot Noir was wine at all, or just a red beverage? Such oddities and slights are well documented by Frenchman, Jean-Robert Pitte.  Students of wine will enjoy Bordeaux / Burgundy: A Vintage Rivalry, which traces the long history and mutual disdain of these intense competitors.

With access to the Atlantic, the estates of Bordeaux, known as chateaux, made carefully blended wines for sale in England and Northern Europe. Landlocked estates in Burgundy, known as domaines, made single varietal wines for consumption in Paris, the former duchy of Burgundy, and parts of Germany.  The French Revolution broke up the vast vineyard holdings of the church in Burgundy, but not so in Bordeaux. Consequently high society, gentlemen farmers of Bordeaux today lord over much larger estates than the descendants of Burgundian peasants, who take great pride in their provincial ancestry and their wines "of sauce and blood."

In the early 19th Century, Bordeaux glassmakers invented a square-shouldered bottle to facilitate the English and Dutch custom of decanting by candlelight. In contrast, Burgundy wines are almost never decanted.  Their slope-shouldered bottles come straight from cellar to table; and so much the better if heavy with dust and cobwebs.

This rivalry only enhances appreciation of their wines' subtle complexities. Let's hope fledgling feuds between Oregon and California help produce spectacular wines as well.

Bordeaux/Burgundy: A Vintage Rivalry
Jean-Robert Pitte (Translated by M. B. DeBevoise)
University of California Press
www.UCpress.edu

Each month, Wine Lingo discusses common but often unclear wine language.

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