One can not, must not, pass these great enterprises by unnoted or with their praises unsung. Their histories are often as interesting as those of the maisons de plaisance of the seigneurs who despised trade and robbed and grafted for a livelihood. Undoubtedly many of them did take the wide road to riches, for the feathering of political nests by the willing or unwilling aid of one’s constituents is no new thing.
The gatherers of the grape under the Burgundians and the Bourbons were not always the happy contented crew that they have so frequently been pictured on canvas. The novelists, the playwrights and the painters have limned the lily a little too strong at times. One judges of this from a chanson which has come down through centuries.
“Allons en vendagne pour gagner cinq sous
Coucher sur la paille, ramasser les poux
Manger du fromage qui pue comme la rage.”
It was said in the good old days that the grape-pickers were wont to eat as much as eight kilos of the grapes a day, to say nothing of drinking three litres of wine,—manifestly they were not so badly off, even at a wage of only five sous for a whole day’s labour.
South from Dijon the itinerary through the core of the Côte d’Or passes in review a succession of names which one usually associates only with a wine list. If one has studied the map of France closely the surprise is not so great, but for many it will come as something unexpected to be able to breakfast at Chambertin, lunch at Nuits, dine at Beaune and sleep at Mersault or Nolay. First off, on leaving the capital of the dukes, almost within sight of its palace towers, one comes to the great wine district of Chénove, and more than all others of this region it is to be revered by the lover of the history and romance of feudal lords. Sheltered, and almost enwrapped by the mountain background, it sits on the edge of the sunny plain where once the Ducs de Bourgogne marshalled their armies and their courtiers.
Not one of the very first wines of the Côte d’Or Chénove comes from the bright particular vineyards or closes of the Burgundian dukes. Their ancient cellars and cuviers are still existent but the wines matured in them are to-day the growth of American roots, planted in the last dozen or twenty years to take the place of those destroyed by the phylloxera, the grafted stocks serving to give that classic body and flavour which have made the Burgundian crus famous. Thus the favourite axiom is proved that it is the soil and not the grape which makes fine wine.
Here at Chénove there is still to be seen the wine vats and presses which served the minions of Philippe-le-Hardi and Charles-le-Téméraire as they pressed their masters’ wines, handling the great fifty foot levers and chanting much as do sailors as they march around the capstan. A block of stone weighing twenty-five tons was alternately raised and lowered with the grapes beneath in great hollowed-out troughs of stone or wood in no far different fashion from the methods of to-day.
Below Chénove is Fixin, glorious in memory because of a striking monument to Napoleon, placed there by one of his fanatical admirers, Commandant Noisat. The Clos de la Perrière, and the Clos du Chapitre, two of the grand wines of the Côte d’Or, also help to give Fixin its fame—how much, who shall say—although this Napoleonic shrine is really a wonder of statuesque sculpture. An alley of pines leads up to a fountain behind whose basin rise stone seats and a rustic shelter destined to protect the effigy of Napoleon, a bronze by the Dijon sculptor, Rude. The whole ensemble is most effective, far more so than the usual plaster, or cast-iron statues of the “Little Corporal” with which France is peopled. To carry the devotion still farther, Monsieur Noisat built the guardian’s house in the form of the Fortress of Saint Helena.
Gevrey is near by, with an old ducal chateau, still well preserved, and supported by an ivy-grown square tower. Gevrey produces one of the most celebrated wines to be found on the lists of the restaurants mondains throughout the world. It is the “Chambertin of Yellow Seal,” coming from the Champs de Bertin, a narrow strip of land sloping down the flank of the hillside to the plain below. Another famous vineyard at Gevrey which festoons itself between the height and the plain is that of Crais-Billon, which takes its name from the celebrated feudal fief of Crébillon.