Our own Gary Hewitt had the opportunity to speak with leading Burgundy authority and noted wine writer Clive Coates for the most recent issue of The Cellar Door. Mr Coates had much to say about the relevance of Burgundy, and gave his insight into its history, culture and offerings. He had so much to say that we could barely contain it all in the June issue of The Cellar Door! As a special supplement to the interview, here is what Clive Coates had to say about…

The new generation of Burgundians

The new generation of Burgundian vignerons that began with the sons and daughters of famous domains—people like Dominique Lafon, Christophe Roumier, Etienne Grivot, that sort of generation. They are all now about 52, born about 1958. I used to call them the Young Tigers; now I call them the Middle-Aged Tigers. They were ever-so encouraging to anybody who wanted to set up in the village. Some Tiger twenty years younger would bump into Lafon in the vineyard and say, “Look, I’ve now taken over from my father and I’m going to do some domaine bottling. Can I come and be a fly on the wall? Can I ask you some questions?” And the Dominiques of this world said, “Only too happy to help.” There’s none of the petty jealousy that there is in Bordeaux, thankfully. Anybody who produces good wine can sell it hand-over-fist, and to the 150th person who says “Can I buy your wine, Mr. Lafon?” he, and his peers, would much rather be able to say, “Well I don’t have any, but what about X, Y and Z, down the road?” And what that means is that the X, Y and Zs at the end of the road are now producing excellent wines. You don’t have to just go to the superstars like Mr. Lafon for decent Meursault.

Tasting off the beaten track

There are villages that are less, as it were, “fashionable,” whose wines are less expensive. Go through and see who are the growers who are recommended in each of those villages, and then go and try and find them. The other side of the coin is, frankly, to go and speak to your local retailer. You know, in the top restaurants the sommeliers are the buyers. Perhaps the person behind the counter in your shop is not the buyer, but if the people in your organization are working properly, they will give the people who are face-to-face with the customer opportunities to taste the inventory.

When I started The Vine in 1984, there were perhaps two or three important individual growers in every village. Now there are 20, 30, or in some villages as many as 60. Pretty well all of them produce at least good, to very good, wines. Some produce outstanding wines, within the context, within the price bracket. If you’re prepared to go off the beaten track, if you’ve got a customer base that trusts you, you can have an absolute ball.

Burgundy’s Pinot Noir

Regarding Pinot Noir, as I don’t have to tell you, there are quite a number of different permutations that you can bring into your winemaking. For example: Do you use all the stems or none of the stems? Do you cold-soak? Do you ferment at a high temperature or low temperature? Do you use lots of new oak or very little new oak? Because each of these permutations can make great wine, that means that each Burgundian wine is different from one producer to the next. You may find there is a particular style that you like better than another particular style. Ten or twenty years ago, the fashionable style was to produce wines using no stems, lots of new oak, quite a lot of maceration, and producing really quite a rich wine, possibly at the expense of its elegance. Well, you know, Pinot Noir must be infused, not macerated. There was a slight reaction to that. People said, “No, these wines are too big; they’re not relaxed; I can’t finish a bottle up; I’m tired.” There was a movement towards a slightly lighter wine, but more intense, with better acidity. Now there seems to be a movement back, particularly in 2009, in that more and more people are now experimenting with using some of the stems, where for twenty years they hadn’t. Burgundy is always changing—which is fascinating—but the point is that the customers, particularly the customers in the more “sophisticated” markets with access to all the decent wines, have really got the bug and are appreciating that there are a number of different styles of Burgundy. They will find what they like, and pursue that. But they will still want to taste a different style, just to have the opportunity to compare and contrast.

Learn more about Clive Coates, his books, and the latest developments in Burgundy at www.clive-coates.com.