Yule Georgieva: Bill, it's such a pleasure to have you. Thank you so much for joining me.

Bill Nanson: Pleasure, pleasure. I'm back 10 minutes and not even time for a coffee from my last visit. But it was a good visit, so.

Yule Georgieva: Well, if you want, we can pause this recording and start over so you can get a coffee.

Bill Nanson: I'm still awake.

Yule Georgieva: You're still awake, you're still doing okay. What time is it over where you are?

Bill Nanson: It's 10 minutes past five.

Yule Georgieva: Okay, well you should be having wine not coffee, but that's a conversation for another day. All right, well let's dive in. So before we get talking about Burgundy, I'm very excited about this episode. I'm sure all our listeners are too, but let's just talk about you for a moment. So tell us who you are and what your connection is to wine and to Burgundy itself.

Bill Nanson: Oh, that's a very small question to start with. Bill Nansen, just coming up on a very big birthday. I'm from what is actually a very good vintage in Burgundy, 1962. So that's the clue. I'm originally from the UK. I worked for a short time in London. When I was working there, I had the opportunity very occasionally to visit Burgundy. I was already sort of like an equal opportunities drinker. I tried everything before slowly, you know, finding I kind of like this stuff. And so I got the chance to visit in Burgundy, maybe a little bit more than once a year, not quite twice a year, for a few years. And then I was working in the chemical industry and I got a job, I changed jobs and I started working for a Swiss company out of Basel, which is in the top corner of Switzerland and only two and a half hours from Burgundy. So instead of coming here once a year, I say here because I'm sitting in my apartment in Bonn right now, I still live in Switzerland though, and so I started visiting Burgundy once, a little bit more often let's say twice a year, three times a year, four times a year, then since 2004 every year I've done the harvest here. I don't always get so wet as a lot of the people because I do most of my work actually in the winery. And there's wine on tap in the winery too. As refreshment, everybody else goes to the beer at the end of the day. I just go to the spigot and, oh, I'll take the Merceau. Quality checking, right? Exactly, exactly. So I've been coming here for quite a few years, the first vintage that I ever tasted from Barrow were the 1996s in 1997 and that was in the Co, well not Cochalaneys, in the Macanay, so it was the village of Chardonnay where maybe the name of the great came from, you know, there's some discussion about who came first. And really in terms of my online presence, which is called Burgundy Report, I started that about 2002, and really I was, I suppose, voraciously reading everything that I could find about Burgundy and still left with some questions and so in the end I couldn't find answers to some of those questions. I thought to myself, maybe I can find myself. And so the website, Burgundy Report, it basically started with just a few visits that I made trying to find answers to certain questions that I had and seemingly it wasn't just my mother and a few dogs and cats that started hitting the sites, you know the traffic started going up, which is, oh, today I got 10 people, I don't know where they came from, but I got 10 people.

Yule Georgieva: Well, it's a 50% increase, that's not bad.

Bill Nanson: Exactly, exactly. And for years and years now, it's been quite stable for a number of years but I get between a thousand and two thousand people visiting the site per day and when I release a new report it's I think the maximum I ever had was close to eleven thousand in one day so somebody is also interested or completely lost on the internet, who knows. So I started doing it really as a hobby. It was sort of like my escape from the office, from my day job, if I can say that. And then over a period of time, you know, the audience grew. I was commissioned to write a book by the magazine, The World of Fine Wine, it was at that time. They had a series of books, they foolishly chose me to write their Burgundy book which turned out to be their best-selling book in the whole series, had a couple of reprints in the US, in Europe and was even printed in Japanese, I have a copy in Japanese. There are a couple of Japanese winemakers here in Burgundy that tell me, Bill, this is incorrect. And I just say, sorry, it didn't translate it. The original text was correct. So, and then a couple of years later came the change of contract that I could decline for the chemical company and I just thought to Why not? So I turned full-time. I started taking subscribers for monthly reports, but 95% of the whole site remains open for everyone, because everything that's more than two years old is open to everyone. You know, the subscriber pays for the new stuff, but new is classified as just over two years. And so I basically said, no, I think I'll do something different. So I changed to full-time writing in 2013. I've just about come to the end of my 10th year and I'm still alive. So it worked. So that's me, that's my connection to the wine and I'm in France just a little close to 50%. I would say just for fiscal reasons, just a little under 50%, but I got an apartment here and I never left Switzerland. I love Switzerland. I love the mountains and so I commute at weekends. So a busy month that I'm here in France, so it's still less than 50 percent. So, and I try to keep my finger on the pulse of what's happening here, the news, the styles, the new vintage now, 2021. Some more classic vintage after quite a number of warmer, drier years. We've come to something that reflects a little bit more the early 2000s, or in some cases even the wines of the 1980s, 1990s, but still with quite some nice maturity to it. So, it's always interesting.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, well that leads nicely to the next question which is to just level set about Burgundy for us. So on your website, yes I did have a look at your website, and by the way I do have to say I read your book and your book is fabulous. So for anyone listening, find my book. I'm the one that many of my minions are always logging into your website to get that number up. It's a fantastic book and I think you've really captured Burgundy well and it's so great to see the profiles on the producers. It's such a great way to learn about it, right? Because they're so distinct.

Bill Nanson: A lot of them, like me, have less hair now because it's the new golden rule.

Yule Georgieva: Well, let's not update the photos. You know, the way that I always felt bad for the queen that we were updating the photos on the dollar bills for her major recipes. But all right, so burgundy, let's level set. On your website, you say that burgundy is like an onion. What do you mean by that?

Bill Nanson: Ah, I think I stole that from the film Shrek.

Yule Georgieva: Yes.

Bill Nanson: When Shrek says, you know, I forget the subject that he had, but you said something was like an onion, you know. Boggart. Boggart. He has so many lairs. And donkeys by the side of him. Lairs? Who needs onion? Cakes have lairs. So, so no, the thing about Burgundy is it's a subject that you can really, really describe as open-ended. You know, nobody knows all the rules off by heart or all the vineyards off by heart and certainly not all the growers off by heart. Because in the Burgundy region, you've got about 4,000 people making wine, Chablis to Côte Chalonnais, further south even to the Mâconnay. And then what I write about and visit is I call Greater Burgundy. So I start up in Chablis, the Côte d'Azur, this region, but I go as far south as Beaujolais. So for me, that's part of Greater Burgundy. And you can find more thousands of producers even in the Beaujolais region. So when I started over 20 years ago, sounds a lot now doesn't it, over 25 years ago, probably you would count the number of really consistently good domains in, well, more than dozens, but maybe not a hundred domains. I would say today, due to a number of factors, the more benevolent weather, the higher price, meaning people can actually invest more money into their cuveries, into their equipment, their temperature control, their grape sorting, all these various facets. I would say that in terms of reliable, very good producers, today we can easily say hundreds of domains and nobody has the bandwidth or the available time to visit many hundreds of domains. I personally, it's enough for me in the time that I have available, I visit about 350 to 400 domains per year. And that's all greater Burgundy, so from Chablis to Beaujolais. And within that number, I would say that I visit about 60, 70% the same domains each year because for me it's important to have my benchmarks to actually be able to position the new vintages. You know, how did this domain do compared to other vintages? Is that consistent with other domains? And then you can sort of, in a way, slightly pigeonhole the new places that you visit or the places that maybe I visit every two, three or four years. So it's the onions, it's all the layers, you've got no chance to know everything, all you can do is hope that you can make a nice snapshot of where the place is today, I would say, but it's about the rules, the traditions, the families, the processes, and of course, ultimately often, So every year it's different.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, that's a great description. So let's actually dive into one of those. Let's start with just some practical information for some people who may not be familiar with this. First, walk us through the main varietals of burgundy, and you can talk about the greater burgundy area, because obviously we have some new introductions in Beaujolais. But then also, can you just give us a quick 101 of the classification system and how the vineyards are defined and the quality levels because that's always a bit confusing I think.

Bill Nanson: Well let's start with the grapes. You can be 95% correct if you simply say for greater burgundy, in white it's Chardonnay and in red it's Pinot Noir or Gamay. Gamay exclusively in the Beaujolais, although I say exclusively, you know, the whole place is about the exceptions. That's the beauty of Burgundy. It's like this but. And so the but in Beaujolais would be that some people are now starting to actually plant a little bit of Syrah or Shiraz in some of the south. Also, they're starting to plant a little bit of Pinot Noir and Beausoleil also that there is some Chardonnay. There's, I think it's about three percent of the total plantings now. Everyone seems to want a Beausoleil Blanc, a white Beausoleil these days, but the good ones are quite rare, I have to say. For someone who really enjoys Chablis and the great wines of the Côte d'Or, the great white wines of the Côte d'Or, great Beaujolais is a very rare thing. White Beaujolais. Pinot and Gamay. In general, there's more white wine produced than red wine and that difference is slowly growing, I would say, for a couple of reasons. You know, in the end, all the growers, they're farmers and the thing about the rules is, in a particular area, you're allowed higher yields for Chardonnay than Pinot Noir. The wine itself can tolerate a higher yield and still be interesting if you're making wine from Chardonnay than Pinot Noir. Once you get above a certain yield in Pinot Noir, it starts to become a little bit dilute and uninteresting. But it does that much sooner than Chardonnay. So you're allowed to make more in a given area, plus at least certainly here in the Côte d'Or, most of the growers, they'll get a few euros more per bottle for a white wine than they will for a red wine. So it's a double win. So some places like the Hill of Coton in the Côte d'Or. Places which were historically producing red wine are slowly turning white and a very simple example would be Chassin-Montrachet, the village in the south of the Côte d'Or. Historically, you know, 50 years ago it would have been over 70, about 75% red wine that was produced there. Today, it's less than 50% red wine that's produced there. And here they call it the whitening of the hillsides. And it's for those simple reasons, you know, more yield allowed, higher price for the whites, you know, it's a double win. Why wouldn't they, when the vineyard needs replanting, replant with white? Essentially that's the grapes. There's another one that people might hear about more often, and it's still at least in the code d'or, reasonable percentage of the total, I think it's almost 7% of the whites today, and that's the Aligote grape. Historically, I say over a hundred years ago, it was an important grape, but then there was the phylloxera crisis where the bugs started eating the vines in the late 1800s and basically decimated wine production, not just in Burgundy or France, but globally. And when they found a solution for replanting the vineyards, people decided that it was higher quality to go for Noir or Chardonnay. So a lot of the Aligote wasn't replanted. So today Aligote tends to be planted in the less optimal places and because of that it garnered a reputation of something that wines and became the wine of choice for the drink Kier where it's mixed with cassis or Kier Royale where it's mixed with some bubbles. Here of course, Cremant de Bourgogne. So people might hear about Aligote, but the 95% rule, it's Chardonnay, it's Pinot Noir and it's Gamay in the Greater Burgundy area. So that's the grapes. In terms of the classifications, Chablis to the north and the Cote d'Or and the Macanay and the Cote Chalonay. I did that back to front because heading north to south actually the Cote comes before the Macané, it's pretty much the same classification the whole time. You start off with regional wines, the base of the classification, and that will be roughly 50% of all the wine that's produced in Greater Burgundy. And by regional, I mean Bourgogne, so Bourgogne Rouge or Bourgogne Blanc, White Burgundy, Red Burgundy. The next level up will be the village level wine and that's where a wine can take the name of where it's produced, the area that it's produced in. So that could be Chablis in the north or in the Cote d'Or it could be Gèvres et Chambartin or in the Cote de Beaune it could be Beaune or it could be Meursault. So that's level two and there are four levels. So you can imagine that for instance in Gèvres-Chambartin you've got the village, you've got the regional wine the Bourgogne, you've got the village wine Gèvres-Chambartin. But within Gèvres-Chambartin there are some extra good places where the level of wine is higher, you know, it's got more of everything and these tend to be the premier crew places. You have those in Shabli, you have those in the Cote d'Or, you have those in the Cote Chalonnaise and new in 2020, had some premier cruises. So, that's the first time in that region. And then, if you can imagine that there are these special places and these are the Grands Crus and you have those again in Chablis, you have those again in the Cote d'Or but you don't have any of those in the Macanay or the Cote Chalonay that's if you like the northern Burgundy perspective in the south of Burgundy which is what I call Beaujolais where it's basically apart from a little bit of white Beaujolais it's slightly different only because you have almost the equivalent of well how can I put it I would say three levels of classification you've got Beaujolais which is the base, you know, ridiculously cheap wine because it's not easy to sell, despite some really good quality makers, you know, the bottles can start at 5 or 6 euros from the domains. It's simply not possible these days for a domain to work conscientiously, and you know do everything to the maximum and sell a wine for 5 euros. You know the bottle and the cork and the label probably cost 3 of those euros. But there you have Beaujolais, the next level up will be Beaujolais Village and then the top will be almost like a Premier Cru you could say, but in terms of the naming it's more like the village wines in the rest of Burgundy. So it's Beaujolais with the name of its village attached to it. So that would be, effectively, you're buying the village, you're buying a Morgan, or you're buying a Moulin Avant, or a Saint Amour, or a Fleury, or a Julienna. So depending on who's speaking, there's 8, 9 or 10 of these you know, because some people are pushing harder at their area you know, we should really be considered as a Beausoleil crew too so these are the Beausoleil crews they don't say premier crew but because it's like the third level in Beausoleil you could almost think of it like a premier crew and they say, it's a Beausoleil crew but effectively you're buying the village a Moulin Arvant, a Saint Amour a Brouilly for instance, or a Côte de Brouilly. So quite a rambling response, but because it's such a big subject. So, but effectively most of it is very similar with the four levels, regional to Grand Cru, but it's analogous, Beaujolais village and Beaujolais crew. I'll just put it like that.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, no, that's fantastic. I mean, I think the important thing to know about the classification, the reason I think it's important to go through is that Burgundy, unlike Bordeaux, where the classifications are attached, of course, to the chateau. In Burgundy, it's attached to the land. So it's a different model.

Bill Nanson: It's exactly that. We talk a lot about the grapes, but really what's important in Burgundy is not the what, it's the where. I love, when I've got some visitors here, I love to take them to a little area where I normally park and it's next to, well it's in the middle of the Grands Crues, in effectively just in Chassin-Montrachet, the white Grands Crues, but the top ones, you know, you can simply point above you here, Chevalier-Montrachet, starting price, or let's say average price, 500 euros a bottle. Right in front of us, Montrachet, average price, 800 euros a bottle. Just lower down on the slope, Batard Montrachet, average price, 300 euros a bottle. Just beyond that, there's no Premier Cru, it starts directly to village wine, average price 50 euros a bottle, but here where we're parked, there's a clearing, there's some brush, there are no vines, and you can imagine over generations if they could have made the equivalent of 40 euros per bottle, having vines in this place, sitting directly next to the most expensive white wine there is in Burgundy, it would have been planted but it doesn't support the vines so you can say 500 euros, 800 euros, 300 euros, 40 euros not worth planting and in essence that's Burgundy, it's Teboa, it's the of everything that there is here. And so, you know, even a young vine, Morachet, is going to cost you about 750 a bottle compared to 100 year old vines in a Burgoyne Rouge that maybe, if it's still a very good producer, might cost you 20. You know, so it's not just a geologist saying, oh here we've got the different levels of rock from this era or it's basically the experience of 700, 800, in some places over a thousand years, generations of often the same families, tasting the wine from vines that they planted, and nine times out of ten, always coming up with a very similar hierarchy. This one is always better than this one. Sometimes this one is just as good, but half the time it's easy to dismiss for people that don't get the chance to come and taste at the mains, it's easy to dismiss the fact it can't be that the village wine is always better than the village wine or the grand crew is always better than the premier crew wine but you know it's absolutely fascinating that normally it is it's the exceptions that really have you reaching for your pen and asking the question but why Is it young vines? Did they have a problem here? Or was there a problem in the winery when they were making the wine? You've searched... it's so ingrained in tasting experience over years and years that it really prompts the questions, why is this not as good? So, that's the fascinating part here. It's easily dismissed but if you do it and if you visit a lot, wow, you can really say, wow, why is that?

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, that is fascinating and I think that Burgundy has such an advantage in a sense with that long history, having gone through that process completely organically, right, identifying not just the acres but the rows that maybe produce a different kiwi. Exactly that. And other regions are still figuring out which grape even grows on their soil.

Bill Nanson: Exactly. Because I love some of the interpretations of Pinot Noir that come from New Zealand, for instance, because, you know, it's one of the few places in what people like to call has a comparable acidity and energy that you can find in Pinot Noir from here. And what's fascinating is, you know, they've got almost no plots of wines that are older than about 30 years old. So, within 30 years, 300 or 500 years of experience that, you know, with all the various plots and things like that. So you could say the wines from New Zealand are incredibly good for the level of experience that they have. So it's part of the fascination of this place, you know, records go back over 1300 years, in some cases over 1500 years, that, you know, there were vines here at that time, so not always Pinot Noir, not always Chardonnay, who knows what was planted, but, you know, again it comes back to the hierarchy of the land, which land was considered the more prestigious.

Yule Georgieva: Well, it's amazing as you say that there's some truth there. So, I do want to shift into doing a bit of a tour. Okay. You do some tours, so let's do a tour of Burgundy, just at a high level. But before we get to that, I'll ask you to set that up in a moment. But can you just give us a sense of what it feels like, right? Burgundy has this reputation of being a place of growers, people connected to the land. Whereas in Bordeaux, I think people sometimes unfairly say that, you know, it's these glitzy chateaus and it has sort of the glam feel to it, almost like Napa. Whereas Burgundy, it's unassuming, it's about the land, it's about the dirt. What does it actually feel like when you arrive in Bonn or when you arrive at one of these estates that's maybe fetching, like you say, $800 a bottle, but it's still somehow has a different feel. What's the overall feel?

Bill Nanson: I think back to over 25 years ago when I first started to come here. Well, the first impression of course is Bone itself, you know, it's a lovely walled, 60% of the walls are still in place, a lovely walled medieval town and once it did have a moat all the way around to protect from the people who wanted to steal the wine in their cellars or who knows what. So that's the first thing. When you get out into the vineyards, you know, I would say, in the Mâconais around Vergissant and the Rock of Solutre. Oh wow, that's some of the seriously most impressive vineyards in Burgundy, I would say. But when I remember my first experiences coming into domains, you know, I was quite selective at the start, you know, I only chose the ones that spoke English. And I just found people that were so matter of fact and so I would say welcoming to someone who wanted to learn a lot but didn't know a lot, you know, and you know you'd ask a question and they'd simply scratch their heads and say, well, let's see then, and they'd disappear and they'd come back with a different bottle from 10 years old or 15 years old or 30 years old even, you know, that was my introduction to Burgundy, everything was so easy. I think it's fair to say in the intervening time, you know, prices have hit hyperspace for a lot of the wines here in Burgundy. I would say really in the last 15, since about the 2005 vintage, you know, we all complained about the price increases in 2005, but if you look today at those prices you would think, oh, I wish I could buy at those prices again, you know, and there's a different generation that largely that's come through in 20 years. It's slightly different, it's less easy to get the appointments today than was once the case you know, and it's no surprise I remember more than 15 years ago someone telling me that the domain like Domaine de la Romani Conti, you know, on everyone's bucket list to visit, I would say probably, you know, more than 15 years ago they were getting over 250 requests per week for visits. It's just not possible. So who knows how many today? I should ask the question. I don't know if they'll answer the question, but I should ask the question. But you know, I ask myself in some respects, how do people start today, you know, to get an idea, to get to be able to position all the wines, to essentially do what I do, how would somebody start today? And it's probably not, it's certainly less easy than was once the case, because there's such a focus on Burgundy today, that there are so many more people wanting to make the visits, and having the ability to make the visits, and time is limited for the producers, you know, so it's also, we can't dismiss the fact now that, okay, it's different before the wines are bottled, but you know, maybe not all the wines are available to taste today like they once were, because you know, this bottle now is over subscribed five times in terms of the clientele who want to buy it. over 500 euros per bottle. Why would a proprietor open the bottle today for people who are just passing by? Because they also don't have wine to sell. I can compare it almost, you know, some of the smaller domains used to always have wine to sell. But we've had a lot of vintages with quite low yields for the past few years. 2018 was the last vintage with a good volume of both red and white wine. And a lot of the vintage since then have been close to half harvests. And some of the domains in 2021, because of frost and bad weather, for the first half of last year, they've made a quarter of the wine that they normally make. So there's not enough wine to go around at the moment which is another of the price drivers at the moment pushing the price higher. So it's hard to compare now with 20 years ago but all the people that I meet and because I've made the connections over many years if sometimes I visit with some friends my friends can't get over how easy and how approachable these people are, you know, and what bottles they're prepared to pull out of the cellar, you know, it's almost easier at some domains for them to go pull out a 1985 than it is to pull out a 2017 these days. So all the modern vintages, you know, they're sold, sold, sold, sold, sold. So it's quite interesting from that respect. So very personable people, very easy to get on, you know. I hear things about other regions, you know. In fact, a well-known wine writer once quite recently actually said to me, you know, if he compares with a certain other region that I won't name, he said, you know, the difference with Burgundy is, after you visit the producers, you still like the wines.

Yule Georgieva: That's a good metric of success.

Bill Nanson: I won't say who and I won't say where. Leave it to the imagination.

Yule Georgieva: Well, Bill, this is fascinating. I think we could talk about Burgundy all day long. So we're definitely going to have to do additional episodes. But let's dive into a bit of a tour and tell you what, why don't we leave Chablis and Beaujolais for another day. Okay. Let's do a tour of the Cote d'Ivoire, maybe into the Cochalones and the Mâconnay, and just walk us through from north to south, tell us maybe a little bit about some of the key villages in each of those areas, and maybe some key producers that you particularly like, or that should be particularly known, and just any key stylistic facts, or anything you think worth noting about those areas as you go through. So let's just go north to south and learn a little bit.

Bill Nanson: It's a whole book, isn't it?

Yule Georgieva: It is, I know we're going to try to do it in like 10-15 minutes. 

Bill Nanson: Okay, well the Cote d'Or to start off with, it's effectively an east-facing hillside, it's about 40 miles long, about 60 kilometers, and east-facing, you know, it's a hillside that comes down and then it's flat, flat to the Jura and on a clear day even Mont Blanc 250 kilometers away you can see. And for me this east-facing thing is important because you know a lot of people say that the name Cote d'Or basically or in French it's gold and so they say you know it's the golden slopes. So right now at this time of year all the leaves on the vines are slowly changing colour and that colour change will be more and more until the leaves fall to the ground in the first frost or the first really heavy rain that comes in the autumn. And so the color is really quite cool and they say, you know, coat door, it's the golden color. I've got a slightly different perspective because it doesn't really make sense to me that the coat door has that name for just two weeks per year and not every year depending on the weather. But if you look at all the old maps from here, I'm talking about maps from a thousand years ago or five hundred years ago, some of the well-preserved maps, almost every map, you know, written at the top, it says Côte d'Orient, the East. So, you're looking to the East and it's this long eastern hillside. There are some little side valleys that here they call cones, but basically for me, Cote d'Or means the east-facing hillside. So that's the starting point for here, where all the expensive stuff is. And so it basically starts just south of Dijon. It used to start all the way into Dijon because today you've got the Côte de Beaune and the Côte de Nuit but a hundred years ago you also had the Côte de Dijon. Côte de Dijon is 99% lost today because Dijon is a big city and it grew and it grew and they needed housing, they needed land to build, so there's a little bit of vineyard land that still exists, but effectively today we're talking about the Côte de Nuit. And you know, you leave Dijon, you have Marcenay, which got its village appellation only in the 1980s, but already has the work and what they call the dossier underway, which takes years to get through the authorities, you know, France is famous for their administration. Let me say the quality of the administration as much as the quantity. And so they're already looking to have some premier crews in Marseillais. You slowly had sounds from Marseillais and you've got Fissa, which has some nice premier crews. I would historically position that a little bit like Poma in the Côte de Beaune, and Nuit Saint-Georges in the Côte de Nuit, as wines with a little bit more structure, a little bit more power and tannin. And 100 years ago, these wines were really sought after because, you know, because of the extra structure and everything. Let's call them, let's say they were a little bit more robust. They lived for longer and that was what people were looking for generations ago because the use of sulfur wasn't very well understood and so wine spoiled. So particularly Poma, Nuit Saint-Georges, Fissin, it kept really well so they were well sought after wines. Fissin, after Fissin heading south you're coming into Gèvres-Chambartin as the locals would say for their Chambartin Grand Cru, the king they call it. They've claimed the title. Gévry-Chambartin has got eight different Grand Crus or maybe I should have checked, maybe it's nine. I need a piece of paper to write them down and make a quick check but eight or nine. And there are only 33 Grands Cru in the whole of Burgundy, and Gevrey already has eight or nine of them. So you've got Ruchot Chambartin, Mazzy Chambartin, you've got Chapelle Chambartin, you've got Charme Chambartin, you've got Chambartin-Claude-Aubez, you've got Chambartin, you've got Latricier Chambartin, you've got Griot Chambatang, you've got Mazoyer Chambatang. Maybe if I haven't missed one, then there are only eight. So as you slowly follow, it's not called the route des Grands Crus for nothing. If you slowly follow the road through the vines. And this area typically sits on the mid slopes, you know, depending on the village in the mid slope, it's the Grand Cruise or it's the Premier Cruise. It's the best balance between the depth of soil, the orientation to the sun and the drainability of the site and of course whatever rock is underneath there, whatever type of limestone is underneath there. But Gévry-Chambétain, you've got the village of Maurice-Saint-Denis, perhaps less famous than it could be, but I would put that down to the fact it's not the quality of the wines that come from Maurice-Saint-Denis, it's that probably its best-known vineyards are actually its Grands Crus, because here you've got another probably five, I think. You've got Claude Laroche. You've got Claude Saint-Denis. You've got Claude Alombre. You've got Claude Etat. They like Claude in Maurice Saint-Denis. And you've got just a little bit of Beaumar as well, which is shared with the next village, which is Chambord-Mousigny. So for that reason, I would say that Maurice Saint-Denis definitely shouldn't be overlooked because some of the premier crews are wonderful, but it's just a name that's a little bit less well known because it's got so much actual Grand Cru land again.

Yule Georgieva: And so stylistically, if I can just interject for Givray and for Moray, what would you say stylistically? Are they a bit more robust or are they more elegant? I know

Bill Nanson: Chambol you're probably going to say is a bit more on the elegant side, but for the others? You know it lots of people like to say yes it combines the earth and power of Gévry-Jean Batain with the floral perfume of Chambord. I think that's a little bit too much for simplification because all the Grands Crus of Maurice Andeny are very different. You've got the elegance of Claude Alhombre, you've got the more power of basically its neighbor on the same slope, the same hillside, you've got the more power of Claude Attard. If you compare the first two Grands Crus in the north, you've got Claude Laroche and Claude Saint-Denis. Claude Laroche, it's well known for its minerality, its structural shape, but it's minerality. You've got Clos Andeni. Very often it's a rounder wine with riper fruit, a wine, let's say, of more comfort, more texture. And then, of course, Bon Marre. It's a wine of power again. So, no surprise that it's the neighbor of Clos d'Etat in that respect. So, the Grands Crus are all completely different, I would say, and north to south, the vines are not the same in the Villages and Premier Crues of Maurice Andoni either. I think it's too much of a simplification to say it's just a combination of Chambord-Mousigny and Gévry-Chambord. It's a place in its own right, but because it's dominated by its Grand Cruises and because very often the Premier Cruises are satellites of the Grand Cruises, it's hard to say it has just this character. That's the problem with Maurice Anderney. Chambord, when you move a little bit to the south, it's a little bit easier. You still got the Bon Mar that's situated within Chambord-Mousigny, a little bit whiter soil there in Chambord, maybe a little bit more floral, but you know it's still real bon marre, there's power there in the wine. It's a wine that usually you should age and wait for, but Chambord-Lusigny itself, you can generalize and say it's a little bit less about the wine, but I would say it's a wine of finesse. There's a just a little, well-made Chambord has just that slightly different style, a little bit more finesse when you've got almost like the ultimate combination of power and elegance and perfume in, for instance, Moussigny. You know, it's a little Burgundy joke, you know, the smaller the name of the wine, normally the more expensive it is. So you've got Chambord Moussigny, but you know Moussigny, uh-huh. You know, today you can't really buy Moussigny for under about 600, 700, 800 euros a bottle. So it's one of the top wines of Burgundy's Moussigny, but it's a wine of power. Maybe Drouin make a slightly more approachable version but generally, you know, the biggest owner, Comte Georges de Vauguer honestly, I'm still waiting for my 98s, my 99s 2000 is delicious, but you know, they're wines that you have to really wait for after Chambord-Mousigny, you start, ok, officially it's Flagey-Echezer, but most people roll the area of Flagey-Echezer into Vaux-Romagny, because you've got... Okay, I shouldn't forget Vougeot. Let me not forget Vougeot, because, you know, it's got its very small 120 hectares of grand Vougeot. Complicated vineyard, mainly because, you know, it's so big, it has so many owners. There are close to 90 owners of finds in the Clos itself. Everything is properly walled, it's really impressive, its size is also impressive, and you know a lot of these owners also sell grapes at harvest time, so you won't just find 90 labels of Clos Vosaux, you could find 130 or 150 different labels of Cloviso, all from the same vintage, so how's that for Burgundian complexity for you? But what's interesting with Cloviso is, you know, we talk about the place in Burgundy and just the other side of the main road, the Route Nationale, from Cloviso, there's no premier crew, it's directly bourgogne rooms. But anyone who says, ah, the wine made from the bottom of the Cloveau-Jo is never Grand Cru quality, doesn't taste enough. There are great producers in the bottom of the Cloveau-Jo, It's some vintages from Faverly, from Jadot, but not just people like that, from Leroy, who also have vines at the bottom, you know. People pay thousands per bottle for a reason. So, so, so, that was Vougeot. Now we're into Flagey-Acheseur and Vaux-Romany. uh again the important wines are the Grands Cru, you've got Grand Echeveur which basically is just the other side of the world of the Clos Rouges, you've got Echeveur which is really a big area that goes high up onto the hillside, low down on the hillside, it's in some dips you know, no two Echeveurs are the same, uh then you've got a small band of premier crews before you hit boom. Oh, now you're talking. Romanie Saint-Vivant, Richebourg, Romanie-Conti, you've got La Grande Rue, and just above Romanie-Conti you've got the smallest appellation in France, it's less than 0.9 of a hectare, it's always impressive how it interlocks with the top of Romani Conti, you know, it's like a little jigsaw, you know, parts of Romani Conti are slightly higher up the slope than parts of La Romani, so you can imagine some consistency between the two wines here. So this wine is not priced unfairly compared to its better known neighbor, let's put it that way. And then you've got La Grande Rue, you've got La Cache, also quite a big vineyard that goes from the bottom of the slope to really quite high on the slope, and then you're only into the premier crumbs like Malconso, Au-dessus de Malconso, Les Saint-Georges. So, I've probably already taken more than 10 minutes and that's just the Côte de Nuit. Nuit Saint-Georges, you know, two personalities. You've got the personality from the north of the village that takes some of its style references, benchmarks from Vaux-Romany itself. It's got a a little bit more sophistication in terms of texture, whereas the south of Nuit-Saint-Georges, and actually you should say that Nuit-Saint-Georges is the only place in the Côte d'Or where the vines stop because the town is wide enough that there's no place where the vines are continuous. All the rest of the Côte d'Or, you know, Chambord is next to Vouger or it's next to Maurice and Denis, but Nuit-Saint-Georges, the village cuts the vines, so the vines restart on the south of Nuit-Saint-Georges, and this is the area also full of famous names, Les Vaucrains, Les Cayes, Les Prouliers, Les Saint-Georges, you know, the small village of Premo Prise, and so you've got Claude Foret, Claude Corvé, Claude Saint-Marc, Claude Desarchilières, Claude Le Maréchal from Freddie Meunier and Chambol, for instance, and here, suddenly, the character... there's no lack of fruit, there's no lack of depth, and for some producers, oh, if you've got the patience to wait 10 years, great wines, I'm such a great fan, for instance, of 15-year-old wines from Patrice Rion or the Domaine de l'Arlo, for instance, but there's a style difference compared to north of Nuit Saint-Georges, they're still premier cruise, but the style is for a more, let's say, more visible level of tannin. You know, the grain is more present. After 15, 20 years, it's really not something of concern, but you know, if you're tasting young wines, and most people starting out taste young wines, they note the structure, and unfortunately, you know, going back to discussing Fissa, Poma, and Nuit Saint-Georges, today that makes those wines less, for want of a better word, fashionable. They're less saleable than the neighbour of Romani. So it's no surprise when you visit a producer, they will tell you, oh yes, this one's from the bone side, they will tell you. But North and South, two different characters. So effectively, that's the Cote de Nuit.

Yule Georgieva: Fantastic. Okay, well, I don't care about the time. We have to keep going. You've come alive telling us about... I feel like we're there. So let's go into the Cote de Beaune.

Bill Nanson: Well just before you hit the Cote de Beaune, you've got, for me, unfortunately a slightly anonymous appellation, and it's still village level, but it doesn't have the name of any single village that's it, if you like, identity crisis and that's Côte de Nuit village and the thing about that is, you know, in theory it still has the same level in the hierarchy as the Nuit Saint-Georges as the Vos Romani, or as the Gévrish-Hombardin Ombudsman, but it can be from many many places in the Côte de Nuit and that's why it's got this relatively anonymous name and you know all the people that get into Burgundy and I'm no exception, we all just love when we have a bottle in our hand to be able to put our finger on a map from where this has come from and that's the problem with Côte de Nuit village, you know you can't really do that. So, that's why I say it's got a slight identity crisis. I don't complain about the quality, you know, there are some great producers. For me, possibly, the best Cote de Nuit Village is called Les Retraits, and that's from a wine that almost transcends Appalachian, you know, it's such a fine wine. You have to pay more for it now, more than most other wines with the same name, but you know, he's differentiated a little, he's got a nice labels, like stained glass window stuff, you search that bottle, but generally it's an appellation that lacks a bit of identity if I can put it like that. But anyway, you head south and effectively you cross into the Cote de Beaune just north of the village of Ladois-Sérigny and Ladois is one of the three villages that are administratively the Hill of Coton. Coton, big Grand Cru area, you know, it's like 130 hectares of red wine, another 70 hectares of white wine, Coton is known, at least red Coton is known, almost a little bit like Nuit and Poma, for its structure, you know, it's a powerful wine. There's no doubt it's got the intensity of the Grand Cru, but it's historically been a structural wine. It's another of the old jokes of Burgundy, you know, in a good year you should wait 20 years to drink your wine, in a bad year you need to wait 20 years before you drink the wine. And Coton was one of those wines, but you know, it's, everything is ripe. It's, you can choose the date of harvest with very little worry. Everything reaches a proper maturity. Coton these days, for at least, for almost 10 years now, certainly since the 2015 vintage, coton has been the value Grand Cru of Burgundy, red couton, because you know, you don't need to worry about the accessibility of the wine, you don't need to worry that it's going to be too structured. If anything, it's almost the other extreme, you've got to be careful that you've got something that hasn't become too mature and is already pushing 14-15 degrees of alcohol, because then it tends to, it starts to lose a bit of its clarity and its purity. So that's the one issue with Coton these days, but really it's a wonderful place and of course for the Coton Charlemagne, it's the only white Grand Cru in the Cote d'Or that's not shared between Pouligny-Montrachet and Chassin-Montrachet, so we'll get to those later, but the Khortom Shaloman, it's a wine I would say of power, it's a wine of minerality and freshness. It doesn't have quite, for me, I've got to admit, it doesn't always have quite the same moorishness of the southern Grands Cru. It's a wine to wait for but it remains always a structural wine, a wine that impresses but not always a wine that you think oh I'm gonna have to open a second bottle. But you know when you compare the price it's also less than half the price of the other Grands Cru in the south as well so but it's a worthy Grand Cru. And it's one that actually I prefer younger compared to older. Older for me means more than 20 years old. And you know, all white wine from Burgundy when it's more than 20 years old starts to have that white chocolate, lanolin, almost truffle-y type of character and it's delicious, it's delicious, but for me I get my kicks with with slightly younger Coton Charmin, I must say. So then you're into Beaune. Well, I've quickly bypassed, I shouldn't, you've got the next village that's responsible for a part of the hill of Coton is Alox Coton, lots of red, not very much white Alox Coton, but of course the white that you have in Alox Coton is Coton Charlemagne, but you don't find much Premier Cru or Village White Wine is what I'm trying to say. Pernod, also its main wine is the Cote Saint-Charlemagne. You're a little bit heading more to south, southwest facing, so there's a bit more freshness in Pernambuco-Versailles. There's a lot of village white wine in Pernambuco-Versailles and it's got a slightly vibrant, almost sort of reductive style to it that's one you can quite often find, pick out blind. It's really nice, this Bernard Végelez. It's a slightly more relaxed version of Cotan-Charlemagne from some respects. I like that. Then you have a big area of Savigny-les-Bains, long time an area with good value wines, lots of character, plenty of premier crues, but certainly an area that blind you could often pick out because it's got a slightly herbal green characteristic to the nose, sometimes the flavours too, again in the last vintages with higher temperatures, easy maturity. Wow, you wouldn't find that. It's also been a really great place to buy top wine for a good price in the last few vintages. And I don't see that changing short term. 2022 was another great vintage with fine rightness and I expect to gain the Grand Cru value of Burgundy to be Corton, the Village and Premier Cru value to be Savigny-les-Bains again and Savigny also has some lovely white wine, some lovely Premier Cru white wine too, lovely freshness. You cross over, then dividing Savigny from Bones, you've got the interstate or the autobahn or the autoroute, depending on where you come from that goes to Paris in the north and this is today the de facto frontier the border between Beaune and Savigny-les-Beaunes. Beaune three hillsides and it's a place with no Grands Crus. Some people say ah maybe Les Greves should have Grand Cru status, Petruzzo, various wines, but there are enough Premier Cru's, there are over 40 Premier Cru's in Boulgne, you know, it's a big area, it's a source of delicious wine, quite well-priced wine as well. Some of the couvées like the Enfant Jésus from Bouchard-Pere, or Plo-di-Mouche from Domaine Drouin. They're quite pricey but you know that they're really historic couvés, almost brands that have been in the market for a hundred years. So they've worked on slowly increasing their price but excellent wines, excellent wines. South of Beaune, Poma. We mentioned that generically people think of Poma as quite a structured wine, I should say. Bone has quite a bit of white wine as well, quite a bit, let's say 15% or something like that, roughly. Historically, that was quite a rich wine, a generous wine, for my taste missed a little bit of zing, a little bit of energy, but you know, the market has moved on. The market used to like that style, appreciate that style of wine. Today, the general market appreciates a little bit more energy, a little bit more precision, a little bit more dynamism, and so a lot more Bohn is being made in this style today, white Bohn. But Pomar and its next and it's next neighbor to the south, Volnay, it's only red wine, it's only Pinot Noir. You can have a little bit of Gamay in the lower lying areas, but this would be used for Pasto Grande or Bourgogne, Grande Ordinaire, lots of different labels these days. But I mentioned the strictness, the structure of Pont Mare like Nuit Saint-Georges or Fissa, but you know it's important not to be dogmatic because you've got high slopes to low slopes and in its neighbor you've got the same, Volney, high slopes to low slopes. Volney is generically characterized as the Chambon-Roussigny of the south. It's the more floral, elegant, perfumed wine of red wine of the Cote de Bonne but you know within the complexity of the slopes you know you will find areas of Follenais that are much more robust more structured than some areas of Pommard so you can generalize yeah Follenais is elegant floral, pomade is structured and powerful, but never take anything, particularly in Burgundy, as the full truth, the whole truth and the only truth. It's just not like that. So, I basically already described Volney, there's not a lot to say. I realized that you also mentioned I should name some producers and I haven't been doing that really, but maybe that's for another day, otherwise we'll be here until it's dark. But after Volney we reach Merseau. Boom, the colour changes, it's part of, let's say, the joys or the cloud cuckoo land, inter-variety of rules and regulations that Burgundy liked to have. So there's an area within Merceau, in the north of Merceau, that if you plant with Chardonnay, even though it's over the border from Volnay and it's in Merceau. And this is the area that's called Saint-Ano. And it's a famous Volnay area, Volnay-Saint-Ano. It's an area that tends to have a little bit... On the hillside, you've got Saint-Ano-de-Millieu, which basically basically runs to an area called Cailleret. I love Cailleret, it's about purity, it's about clarity. Saint-Honor has a little bit more power and certainly lower down the slope it has deeper soil, there's more clay in the soil, it's darker soil and Saint-Honor, it still has perfume but it's a wine with a little bit more power as well, it's proper red wine country. There are a few people that still like to plant white and why not, you know, maybe they already have enough red. Comte Laffont is one, Marquis d'Angeville is another, and he actually, Guillaume d'Angeville, he, because it's planted in an area of Saint-Honor, he actually writes Meursault Saint-Honor on his label. There are not so many Meursaults Saint-Denis, but they're normally just Meursault or Meursault Premier Cru. The one of La Femme, for instance, could be a Premier Cru, but he doesn't like the name that they have for that particular part of the vineyard, so he chooses an old name, it's over a hundred years old, but it's not in the Appellation Controle which he finds boring and not so interesting. So and he gets enough money for his wine anyway so he's quite happy with Meursault Désiré and that's next to Meursault Sentinel. Meursault itself, no Grand Cru but one of the premier crus there is usually priced a little bit higher and you could describe as their quasi-grand crew and that would be Merceau-Périllais. Now Périllais basically, Périllais itself, it's stone, it's limestone and Périllais usually designates an area that was once used as a quarry so they were extracting stone to build the local houses in the village and Merso Periere, the stone actually came out of this vineyard to build the spire of the church in Merso itself. So there's lots of rules today about what you can and can't do in vineyards like making holes and filling them with soil. Where did the soil come from? And you know you lose your appellation control, eh? And you know 500 years ago they just dug holes, they pulled out the rock and then they filled it back with whatever soil they could find and planted some vines and that's what we have today. But today you can't change things. But Meursault has plenty of premier crews, starting with things like Porouzo, Boucher, Goutte d'Or, then you've got the fun again with like higher and lower parts of Genevrier, higher and lower parts of Les Champs, but actually you've got the higher and lower parts of Les Champs, but even higher is Perriere above Les Champs, and you know, it's the games people play, you know, because of obviously the higher part of Champs has more energy and more freshness than, let's call it, the more generous parts lower down on the slope. Again, I'm generalizing, you know, the market wants wines today not that are buttery and rich, they want precision, they want energy, they want direction and Merceau is very happy to produce those wines and sell those wines of course today too. So that's Merceau, no Grands Crues, but it borders then, well just above Merceau is another of these places that has, let's call them, an original set of rules. So it's called Blany. It's high up on the hillside, it's just like a little hamlet of five or six houses with two or three domains and it's still a reasonable area of land but again like this area of Meursault the label depends on what's planted. So if it's planted with Pinot Noir it's called Blagny and it takes the name of some of the vineyards there. Nice wines but I don't really ascribe a particular character to Red Blagny to be honest but some good wines, tasty wines, premier cru level wines as well but again I don't have really an archetypal character for Blagny in my head but to the north of Blagny if you plant with Chardonnay it's called Nurso Blagny and there are some lovely ones from there, the Domaine Comtesse de Chéryse, which are based in Bolognese, making great great wines today, really top level I would say, they're only now showing wines after their bottle, so I only just tasted the 20s last week, when generally I'm now tasting 20-21s but I remember the 19, the 2019s and one of my top five white domains in the whole of Burgundy, really top quality wines. But the southern side of Blagny, sorry I digressed, the southern side of Blagny, this is Pouligny-Montrachet if you're planted with Pinot, it still takes the Blagny label. So it's one of these like... I can't vent here with these... Those are the two main areas that are like that, the you know, Meursault, Saint-Honor, Blagny. But then really we're talking about Pouligny-Morachet, that's the neighbor of Meursault. Historically, you know, you talked about tension in these wines, that they didn't have the same richness of Merceau and for generations people wanted the richness of Merceau. Pouligny was effectively the poorer cousin of Merceau for many many years. Now you could say the wines of Merceau a more Pouligny style from a generation ago than Pouligny is today. But, you know, Pouligny is about tension, it's about purity, it's about clarity, it's about also for many wines minerality. But Pouligny is also where the great Grands Crues are situated and it comes back to my little discussion about place you know here it's it's 500 euros a bottle here it's 800 euros a bottle here it's 400 euros a bottle it's 40 euros and here it's not planted that's effectively the border of Pouligny and Chassin Montrachet. They share some Grands Crus and some they have on their own. Chassin have 100% of Crio Khiyo, Bata and Monrachet, but they share Bata and Monrachet itself, but they don't have any of Chevalier or Bienvedu Bata, which are only within Poulinim Monrachet. So, so, there's always a political dimension to, you know, to some of the merry-mandering, you know? distinctions in terms of terroir and the names of some of the wines. But really, Pouligny, it's, you know, we talk about the Grands Crues being prime location, mid-slope. Pouligny is one of the rare places where you've got some Grands Crues that are really on the flat of the land, they abut the hillside, but Batam or Ache and Bienvenue Batam or Ache, really they're on the flat of the land. Obviously we're dealing with millennia of weather and rain bringing down the nice parts of the soil and the rocks down into this area because abruptly both Bienvenue which goes a little bit further into the flat, the plain of Bouligny-Montrachet and Bataille itself, you know, they stop and then there's no intermediate premier crew between those Grands Crus and the village. You move directly to village level wines. So we could say that's the border of where the good stuff got washed down the hillside. But Montrachet, it's, you know, what can one say about Montrachet? There are vintages occasionally these days where, compared to Chevalier, higher on the slope. I almost find Moraché a little bit too much, a little bit too rich, almost oily in texture. I'm talking about young wines, maybe I'd have a different perspective if I'm comparing 30 year old bottles, but you know these days people don't have those opportunities so much because of the price of the wines, the availability of those wines. But you know some vintages, I have to say a vintage like 2020, hands down, every Montrachet that I tasted, and I realize, you know, I'm in a very privileged position with the Domaine Visits that I make, and maybe it was seven or eight different Montrachets that I'd managed to taste with the 2020 village. Hands down a greater wine than every other Grand Cru from that era. Bata or Chevalier. 2020 was a Montrachet vintage and you just have to say and that's the terroir, you know, but some, the climate, some vintages, it masks it a little bit, maybe it resurfaces with time in bottle, but you know, the climate today is very different to 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 200 years ago, and you know, the classification of Burgundy today reflects history but somehow it can still fit with perfection today even in 2020 which was a hot dry year, you know, 19 that was a year with more alcohol, a little bit more richness in the wines, a little bit less precision and that was a vintage where more often than not I found the Chevalier more interesting probably because it just had a hint more acidity, a hint less alcohol, because of that it had extra precision compared to a lot of the Montrachet wines but in 2020, hands down Montrachet. It's very easy to disparage something like Montrachet without regularly tasting because you know it's expensive and you once had a bad one. You can say that about everyone but you know some vintages you just have to take off your hat and say bravo and 2020 would be an example of nothing compares to Montrachet from my perspective. Then you're already in Montrachet because Montrachet is shared between the two villages, you already almost invisibly cross into the border with Chassin-Montrachet and let's call it the last major village of the Côte d'Or and multiple premier crews, lots of great great wives. I would say generally a little bit more supple than the directness, the intensity, the tension that people like to use that word of Paulini-Morachet, but no lack of shape and clarity and structure. You know, it's almost the Cloveau-Gerard of white wine in some cases, but it's got a generosity that doesn't make the wine hard, absolutely delicious. The one thing that really has changed a lot already in the time that I've been visiting in the last 25 years is the proportions of red and white wine that have been made in Chassin-Morachet, because you know 25 years ago there was much more red wine made than white wine but coming back to you know in the end they're all farmers and they've got higher yields from whites, they've got a couple of euros and sometimes more than a couple of euros more sales price for a bottle of white wine, you know there's been the whitening of Chassam-Morachet today much less than 50% of the village is now red wine. Even areas that you would say traditionally, you know, there's a darker soil, more iron in the soil, redder soil, a slightly different type or configuration of the stones, the limestone in the vineyard. You'd say areas that are traditionally red wine areas are being pulled out and changed to white wine. But it's what the market wants. I know I'm not saying those are not great wines still but you know they're hard to find if you have the good fortune to find a bottle of Chassan-Maurachais red from the 60s or 1970s you know quite often it will say Chassal-Maurach, you think it's a village but most of those reds in those days had a lot of Premier Cru wine in them as well or maybe were 100% Premier Cru. You know, you taste one of those wines today and you just think, you know, it's a lesser price today but it's not a lesser wine but Chassin, red Chassin, like Pommard, like Nuit Saint-Georges had a reputation for being a structural wine, a tannic wine and one that you should keep but if you find one really take advantage of finding that bottle because you know you find some beautiful things it's a shame that we're moving more in the direction of white wine from that perspective because those opportunities are fewer and far between to taste such wines but you know Chassin a super place don't disregard it as or don't regard it as the poor cousin of Pouligny-Morachet, most definitely not. It's actually in some ways more interesting because you've got more variety, more red and white. There's a tiny little amount of Pouligny-Morachet red and an even tiny amount of premier crew red Pouligny-Morachet. But there's quite a lot in Chassal and it's worth investigating. Last village of the Kot Dor to the south is Santané. Historically it wasn't always included in the Kot Dor, you know, people would say it's 50 years ago they would have said the Kot Dor stopped in Shassan Mauraché but today people tend to say Santané but if you stand high on the hill on Saint-Denis, you can see why it's a borderline case. And that's because I mentioned, you know, the principal unifying factor of the Cote d'Or is this east-facing hillside. And you absolutely still have that in Saint-Denis. But in Saint-Denis, if you look to the east, this is where your view of the Jura, 150 kilometers away, is starting to become blocked by other hillsides. You no longer have the plain of the Sone River all the way to the Jura between you and the mountains. You now have other hillsides. You know, you're starting to have the hillside that forms part of the Colchard-Lanaise with Bouserin on the Saint-Denis side and Rouy on the other side of that hillside, you know, there's some blockage, there's some change of the topography of the place. And so, also because you're now starting to have a more mixed agriculture. You can find cows in fields next to vineyards, or you can find maize or barley or corn being grown. And that's something that carries through then into the Cochalanaes and the Muckanay as well. It's slightly more mixed, it's not just the monoculture of the vines in the east-facing hillside that you have in the Cote d'Or today. And of course that's also a modern construct because 50 years ago a family, let's say two generations of family in a big farmhouse in Burgundy, they couldn't live only on the income from making and selling wine or more often than not just selling the grapes because they were sold to people like Bichot, Bouchard or Jadot, you know, some of the big maisons who had the ability to crush the grapes and make the wine. Not everybody could afford the equipment because the margins making grapes were not significantly higher than, as I say, planting corn or having pigs or cows. So that was the reality in Burgundy 50 years ago. You know, it's only since the 1960s that most of the gaps in the Cote d'Or have slowly been filled with vines. So that's the Cote d'Or in only half an hour instead of probably 10 minutes.

Yule Georgieva: No, but you know what, this is so informative. And I think we will have to leave the Coat Chaloneres and the Marconnet for another day and Beaujolais and Chablis. We've got lots more to cover. I just have a quick lightning round for you before we wrap up.

Bill Nanson: Okay, let's do it. 

Yule Georgieva: First, what would you say are your top three to five vintages for red and white across the Cote d'Or? Well, let's start with white. 

Bill Nanson: Do you want to clarify that? Are we talking the last 10 years or are we talking the last 25 years? 

Yule Georgieva: Let's say the last 25, last 30, just the best vintages of the last...

Bill Nanson: Okay.

Yule Georgieva: Let's go big, because you did mention 1962 was a good one.

Bill Nanson: It's quite a good one. So the white wine, recent vintages, 2020 is a great one, 2014 is also a great one but one that still needs some patience and of course I'm talking from my perspective of someone who likes some acidity, some energy, some clarity and direction in the wines. I loved the 2007s when they first came out. Some of the Villages were a little bit screechy, maybe a little bit too much acidity, but Premier Cru, Grand Cru, wow, great, great wines. The problem with 2007 was it was really in the time of when the issue of oxidized wine started and you know middle-aged let's say 10 plus years old white wine is you know it's it's it's like tossing a coin you don't know whether you're gonna have a good one. It's the base wine that's the issue today it's more easily oxidizable than was once the case so if if you seal with cork you know you have good corks and less good corks in terms of oxygen transport in the corks, you know the standard deviation, the belk, the average is in the middle, the least oxygen transport is on one side and the most oxygen transport is on the other side. You have everything, it's an average. And you have corks with very low oxygen transport and all those wines are tip-top condition, not a problem. The average wine is tending to fall over and those corks that have a higher than average oxygen transportation level, you know, most of those wines have been dead for a long time. with the 2012 vintage was the last vintage that I bought white wine to cellar that was sealed with natural cork. You know, a lot of people will be shocked but for me I put too much great wine down the sink because it was completely oxidized and I don't like the taste and smell of oxidation. You know, if I did that I'd be drinking lots of wine from the Jura, I'd be drinking lots of wine from Spain, from Sherry, Haveth and these places but I don't because it's not my thing. So something that came onto the market in the early 2000s at the Amalgam Cokes the most famous cellar is or Di-Am as the Brits and the Americans might say, and it's a cork amalgam that, you know, initially was developed against corked wine. So, it goes through a process where it uses effectively a gas at a certain pressure and temperature that it acts like a liquid or halfway between a gas and a liquid, and it dissolves the impurities in the cork. It makes them soluble and it takes them away. And then what's more interesting for oxidized wine is all these cork particles are bonded back together with a type of glue. It's an industrial process and you know instead instead of having a bell curve that's like this in terms of oxygen permeability boom it's like this you know it's very easy to measure it's very consistent as all industrial processes should be and because of that you know it works really well as it is I hesitate to call it a solution to oxidized wine because you know the base problem with the base wine still exists but it seems to be for at least wines of 15 years old because we haven't had this type of seal for much longer than that it seems the perfect sticking plaster, I'll call it that, it's a solution to the oxidizable property of the wine today compared to 30 years ago. And that's quite a nebulous discussion of why it might have changed, but that's my understanding of the situation and empirically it works for me today like that. I haven't thrown a wine away since the 2012 vintage. Well that's good. I'm still throwing away wines from 2011, 2010, 2009, you know, too many losses but going back to it for me 2020, 2014, 2007 are really standout in let's say the last 15 years or so. And going any further back than that, it's just problematic because you've got an 80% chance that the wine is caught, sorry not caught, is oxidized. That's a shame. Reds, ooh, that's interesting. So many differences in the last 25 years we go from what I would call the classic vintages, you know the first vintages that I started buying from the shelf in wine shops would be 92, 93, 94, the first vintages I bought on Primer in case slots were 96, 99 is great, 2002 is delicious, 2010 is equally delicious, in between you've got 2005 which is a great great vintage but a lot of the wines are still not quite ready, you've got 2012 a vintage of beautiful clarity but wines that they suddenly went tight and are only now starting to show themselves a little bit, only now just starting to open up a little bit. 15, 16, 17, 17 were delicious, 18 is okay, we're in a period now we have a lot of extra rightness but I would say 19, wow, maybe the Pinot Noir vines are starting to become accustomed and getting used to vintages of higher temperatures, less rainfall, drier vintages, you know, 2019, 2020 were vintages where the vines would have really suffered because it's not ridiculous to compare them with 2003 and 2003 the red wines had no acidity. Those that live today are basically living on their structure I would say. You wouldn't have said they were balanced wines at the time but some are remaining have plateaued and they're staying very consistent. They're hardly maturing but they're still actually relatively young fruit. That's the issue with modern vintages today. We don't know how long you have to wait for that fruit to slowly come into maturity as we would understand it from older vintages. But for me, slowly working back, 2019, a great, great red vintage for de Nuit. In general I prefer it to 2020 because 19 is certainly better in the Cote de Beaune and you have some better wines in the Cote de Nuit in 2020 but in general not everything. So 19, 2019, 2005, great great vintage, it seems it seemed to have everything in its youth and then a lot of the wines just went very tight. Some have always been great, some are still not open, but I consider a great great vintage. 99 is a bit like 2005 where I bought far too much wine. But you know, if you have some you're trying to get rid of, you have a friend like me. But I'm still harvesting those wines and enjoying them a lot now. But 2010, 2002, beautiful, with beautiful vintages but great, great and importantly for a great vintage, the measure of a great vintage for me is not just a few wines where I just think oh wow, it's where everyone had the chance, the shot of making some great wines and really those three vintages are certainly at the good addresses, wines where you can't lose. 1905 and 99 I would say are my top three vintages in the last 20 years.

Yule Georgieva: Good, good tips. I'm sure all of our listeners are going to go and try to get their hands on some of those, but Bill, I think we have to wrap up, but this was fantastic. This was such a wonderful survey of Burgundy. And we are absolutely going to get back together again and talk about Chablis, Beaujolais, maybe deep dive into some of these villages. So thank you so much for your time and we'll hopefully see you again soon. So thank you so much for your time and we'll hopefully see you again soon.

Bill Nanson: Until next time.

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