to work on a very sophisticated thing for an iPod that recommends wines in restaurants. My reaction [ laughing ] was:“ Why don’ t you ask the Sommelier?”
GH: Burgundy is sold around the world— there are new Asian markets, the important American market, the established British market, and, of course, the home market in France. In your experience, do you find that different markets have different palates? Are Americans or Canadians looking for something different than the French might?
CC: Burgundy is always changing, which is fascinating, but the point is that the customer— particularly the customer in the more sophisticated markets with access to all the decent wines— appreciates that there are a number of different styles of Burgundy, and they will find what they like, and pursue it. I think the Burgundy customer is— and I don’ t want to denigrate the Cabernet Sauvignon customer— but I think he or she, is a bit more sophisticated, a little bit more open to new things; a little bit less of a slavish follower of fashion.
GH: We’ re a young market here, and we have exposure to wines from all over the world. We have equal access to Chile, Argentina, or Australia, as we do to the wines of the South of France or Burgundy. What should a consumer in our market look for in a basic Burgundy, red or white, versus a good or great Burgundy?
CC: When I conduct people around Burgundy, in the introductory tasting I give them wines from the same person in the same vintage— a Bourgogne Blanc, a Meursault Premier Cru; and the same thing in red, a Bourgogne Rouge, a Volnay Premier Cru— to illustrate the hierarchy within. Within its context, the generic wines, the Bourgognes, can be utterly delicious, but if you pay a bit more, you get something that has more interest, more concentration, can last longer in the bottle, and eventually become more complex— but the basic flavour or the character is there in the generic wine. It is from the same grape after all.
GH: You mention that if you want to choose a Premier Cru, it will develop greater complexity. What advice can you give in terms of maturing Burgundy wines?
CC: Ninety per cent of the world’ s wine is made for drinking within the year that it has been bottled. When it comes to top Burgundy, you are selling it before it’ s ready for drinking. When it comes to Premier Cru Burgundy, you buy it and it has to be held for three or four years( or whatever) until it’ s in its prime. My“ Coates Maturity Chart” is a tool to show that you have to keep Grand Crus for longer than Premier Crus, Premier Crus longer than Villages wines, and so forth. Second, you have to take into consideration the size of the bottle, because that affects the time that you need to keep it. Third, there’ s a mysterious x. If it takes x years for the wine to be ready for drinking, it will continue to be at its peak for at least another x years if it is a really good wine from a really good vintage. Then it will further decline over a further x years before it’ s completely dead and buried.
GH: Sounds like algebra. But this is an important concept for consumers interested in Burgundy: patience may be required. People in our market are also looking for organic products. Can you touch on that topic in terms of Burgundy?
CC: It’ s perhaps no coincidence that there are more biodynamic domaines in Burgundy than there are anywhere else in France put together, particularly when you think that the Burgundy vineyard is so morcellated, so what your neighbour does is going to affect what happens to your vines. There are quite a few practicing biodynamists in the region who are trying to live with nature, rather than against it, and to create a living soil. We don’ t yet know what role the micro-flora and micro-fauna play in enabling the root to take up the taste of
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