Redding is more copious and careful in his remarks on the Burgundies. “The wines of Tonnerre,” says he, “of the finest kind fetch ninety francs the hectolitre on an average; and the other wines in gradation from sixty to thirty-five. The wine of Olivotte, one of the best, has good flavour, is fine, and of excellent colour, but it lacks the true bouquet, unless in very favourable years. The communes which furnish the best wines are Tonnerre, Epineuil, Dannemonie, for the finer red wines.”
The country round Tonnerre has many distinguished vineyards; as those of Pitoy, de Perrière, and Des Preaux. Near these localities is situated the famous vineyard called Des Olivottes, already spoken of, which produces wines of a good colour, much body, and particularly spirituous. They are at the same time fine and delicate, and possess aromatic flavour and bouquet. Among the white wines of Burgundy is the Chablis, so universally used with oysters, both in France and on the Continent generally. The best classes of Chablis, produced at four leagues from Auxerre, rank among the second classes of white Burgundy. Chablis is not always to be procured good in England, more especially in the provinces; but such as desire a light, pleasant wine with their oysters, may swallow a tumbler of Chablis or Sauterne, or vin de Pouilly, or a large glass of good Bucellas, a wine possessing the fragrancy and bouquet of the Rhenish, with the warm, aromatic, and cordial flavour of the best Spanish and Portuguese wines. Bucellas is produced at about six leagues from Lisbon; it is preferred to the dry wine of Setuval, and is stronger than Barsac. It is, however, like all delicate wines, irretrievably injured by an admixture of brandy. Care should therefore be taken to procure it from a trustworthy source.
To return to the vins de Bourgogne. It would take a volume to describe the different species of Burgundy. It is the vinous product most noted in France for its exquisite flavour, bouquet, and delicacy; but Burgundy is nevertheless a wine which least bears transport even on land, whilst transport by sea is too often fatal to its fragrance and flavour. Within the last thirty years I have imported three parcels, one of which was completely spoiled. The two others (one I procured through the good offices of my late friend the celebrated Mauguin, deputy for Burgundy) arrived soundly and uninjured; but the merchants had taken care to envelope the bottles in a thick paper, very much like cotton wadding, and to encase the wine in two casks, the inner hogshead being smeared over with a composition formed of plaster of Paris and other ingredients of which I am ignorant. Burgundy is also frequently exported, more especially to Russia and America, enveloped in salt. The Burgundy wines are divided into numerous classes. In the quantity yielded, as well as in the quality, these classes differ hugely.
“That of the first class,” says Redding, “is small in quantity, and, if any other wine be mingled with it, is certain to be injured irreparably. From hence it may be judged how little the common wine of Portugal can claim to be classed high in the list of superior wines, when from six to ten gallons of brandy are added to each pipe. The difference in the effect of wine that intoxicates from the presence of a large admixture of alcohol, and that which exhilarates from its native qualities alone, is very singular. The pure wine, by the accurate blending of the constituent parts, even where there has been a habit of free indulgence, never leaves those distressing effects upon the constitution which are caused by drinking wine and unblended alcohol.”
The author of the “Topographie des Vignobles” says that the vineyards of Burgundy cover 103,000 hectares; the produce, on the average, being 2,550,000 hectolitres of wine, 70,000 of which are consumed in the country. The vineyards have increased very much since the Revolution, many landowners having converted into vineyards low and marshy lands; others having introduced manures, or carried new earth upon the old to increase the crop; others, again, have substituted young for the old plants, and even common plants for the fine and superior growths of the vine. This has caused a degeneracy in the wines in the opinion of the purchaser; but, notwithstanding the increase in low and common wines, the number of good vineyards have, in the opinion of good judges, likewise increased. But little has been written in England on the subject of vineyards since the time of Arthur Young, whose work on France was published at Bury St. Edmund’s in 1794, seventy years ago. The most modern journal giving an account of the Burgundy vineyards that I have met with is the journal of Mr. James Busby, published originally in New South Wales, and reprinted by Smith, Elder, and Co. several years ago.
It is no common thing, according to the best authorities, for a hogshead of red Burgundy wine to fetch from 1250 to 1500 francs; but the white wine is never said to rise above 600 francs the hogshead.
Touching the Clos Vougeot in particular, however, M. Joubert remarks—and he represents at Paris the houses of Barton and Guestier of Bordeaux, of Ruinart, père et fils, at Rheims, of Charles Marcy of Nuits, and of Deinhart and Jordan of Coblentz—that this famous vintage is year by year deteriorating. Formerly, says M. Joubert, this wine possessed the greatest renown of any wine in France, but it is not so now. It is no longer the production of artistes, but purely and simply an affair of trade. So long as the vineyard was the property of the monks (we owe to the monasteries the finest vineyards of France), the Clos Vougeot was made with infinite care, and carefully preserved till age had developed its full perfections. The Messrs. Tourton and Ravel had continued to practise these good traditions, but M. Joubert seems to insinuate that since their time fraud and falsification abound in the preparation of the wine. This remark was probably addressed to the late notorious Ouvrard, who, in the year 1832 or 1833, took a large house at the corner of Langham Place, for the purpose of making known these wines. But notwithstanding these frauds, Burgundy produces in good years admirable wines, in the most exact signification of the term, possessing an incomparable colour and bouquet. A worthy Benedictine named Perignon, according to the author of the “Spectacle de la Nature,” presided at the making of the wines of the Abbaye of Hauvilliers; and Pluche says, by the invention of new processes, Père Perignon procured for these wines a reputation which they never enjoyed before.
As though the vinous wealth of Burgundy were not already sufficiently extensive, the wine proprietors have introduced within the last dozen years a sparkling Burgundy; as Deinhart and Jordan, at Coblentz, have sought to introduce a sparkling Moselle; but these new inventions, though applauded by greenhorns, are not patronised by those wiser and older wine drinkers who have been accustomed to Nuits, Volnay, Beaune, Pomard, and Chambertin. The Nuits wine is seldom fit for drinking till the third or fourth year after the vintage, but is said by Henderson to bear the carriage well; and there can be no doubt that, when old, it acquires a high flavour. Salins, who wrote in 1704 the “Defense du vin de Bourgogne contre le vin de Champagne,” says, the inestimable advantage which Burgundy possesses over its rival is that of furnishing successively cases of wine for all seasons of the year. “In the first place,” says he, “there are the wines of Pomard, Beaune, and Volnay; then the white wine of Meulsant; and lastly the Nuits qui n’a pas son pareil et ne peut être assez prisé.”
It is the district of Nuits which produces the Burgundy called St. George and the Meursault wines. Here, also, the curious wine called Mont Rachet is made of three distinct kinds of grape grown on the same aspect, with no difference that can be discovered in soil; and yet, says Redding, one species is so good as to bring three times the price of the others. The wine produced at Volnay, a village situated about three miles from Beaune, was in Barry’s time, who wrote in 1775, exactly eighty-nine years ago, the finest and most volatile wine in Burgundy.
In the year of a good vintage, there is no better wine of entremets than Beaune. It is of a fine red colour, has no noxious qualities, does not heat the blood like other crus of Burgundy, will keep a long time without spoiling, and will bear water carriage. I have drunk excellent Beaune in the remotest corners of Hungary and Transylvania, in the heart of Poland, nay, even in the midst of Russian snows. It is a favourite wine both at Petersburg and Moscow, where great quantities are consumed, mingled with ice and water in the summer months. In order to drink Beaune in perfection, it should not, however, be more than four or five years old.