The Clos Vougeot, the cradle of an equally well known Burgundian wine, is scarce a half dozen kilometres away and may be classed among the historic chateaux of France. Still enclosed with its rampart of whitewashed wall, the great square of vineyard remains to-day as it has been since first developed by the monks of Citeaux.
The property has, it is true, been dismembered and divided among many proprietors, but the two great square pavilions joined together originally gave the Clos that distinctive aspect which, in no small measure, it retains unto this day. Taken as a whole, it still possesses a proud mediæval aspect, though the modern porte-cochère, an iron gate which looks as though it was manufactured yesterday in South Chicago—and perhaps was—somewhat discounts this. Years ago, when the Clos Vougeot was the nucleus of the many Vougeots of to-day, the grapes passed entirely through the wine-presses of the monks, who reserved the product entire to be used as presents to Popes and Princes. Thus Clos Vougeot was the model for all other ambitious, monastic vineyards, and those mediæval monks who excelled all others of their time as wine-growers were the logical inheritors of that Latin genius of antiquity which gave so much attention to the arts of agriculture.
Hard by Vougeot is Romanée-Conti, first celebrated under the ancient régime when the
court-physician, Fagon, ordered its wine as a stimulant for the jaded forces of Louis XIV, a circumstance which practically developed a war between the wine growers of Champagne and Burgundy, with a victory for the Côte d’Or, as was proper. To-day we are backsliders, and “champagne” has again become fashionable with kings, emperors and the nouveau riche.
The property known as Romanée-Conti has been thus known since the Revolution, when this princely family of royal blood came into possession thereof. The old abbey is to-day, in part, turned into a beet-sugar factory, its thousand brothers and sisters now giving place to working men and women of the twentieth century, less picturesque and less faithful to their vocation, without doubt.