The wine route of Burgundy was created together with the wine fraternity (La Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin) in the 1930s, making it the first wine route in the entire world. They wove together a route running through 38 villages and wineries, among the largest and most famous wine estates in Burgundy.
On a 60-km route beginning in the outskirts of Dijon, the capital of the region, and stretching south to the town of Santenay, it passes through many of the most prestigious wine estates in France, if not in the entire world: names that command respect and stir the taste buds and the reverence of connoisseurs. The route opened in the summer of 1937, and the people of France were invited to come get acquainted and taste the finest wineries, most of which they had only ever heard of and dreamed about.
The wine routes of Burgundy
Over the years, under the influence of the “Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin,” more wineries were added to the route, and in fact, the Bourgogne wine route grew and split into several different routes, which I’ll go over now.
Route des Grands Crus: The Route of the Great Wines
The original route was renamed “Route des Grands Crus,” “the route of the great wines,” which many call “the royal road.” This route (map further below) winds between vine plots surrounding wine estates that are centuries old, vineyards planted as far back as the Middle Ages, and even earlier, by the monks and farmers who held all the secrets. Back then, only they knew how to read and write well enough to “remember” which treatment did the vine good and which blend worked better than others.
Gevrey-Chambertin
After the southern outskirts of Dijon, the route passes through the well-known estate of Gevrey-Chambertin, where archaeological excavations (2008) uncovered vine remains and pottery shards bearing wine traces dated to the 1st century BCE, evidence of the wine customs of Roman soldiers in the province of Gaul. Today, the estate, around which a charming town has grown up over the years, produces dark red wines, rich in flavor but not especially strong, 10–11% alcohol, mostly from Pinot Noir grapes (noir meaning black, dark).
As with many wine estates, the Gevrey-Chambertin name covers several different plots and producers making similar wines from the same grapes, yet different because of the “terroir,” that magic word that wraps up the soil, the sun, the weather, the wind, the oak barrel, the winemaker’s patience, and all the other magic qualities that make a wine what it is. On the supermarket shelf you’ll find these wines priced between 20 and 100 euros, but at the auction houses, and the secret or private ones too, you’ll also find a red wine from the David Duban estate, AOC, 2014, at the modest price of 983 euros.
And by comparison, a case of 6 bottles of Côtes de Nuits 2010, from the Romanée-Conti estate, sold to a wine lover from Hong Kong for 30,664 euros. Every year, 8 out of the 10 most expensive wines changing hands in global wine sales come from the Bourgogne region (there’s a good chance the other 2 come from Bordeaux…). Further along this wine route you’ll reach villages, or wine estates, like Vougeot, Vosne-Romanée, and Nuits-Saint-Georges: names no less prestigious.
Beaune
Almost halfway between Dijon in the north and Santenay, you’ll find the town of Beaune (pronounced “bone”). It’s a small, beautiful town worth visiting even if wine isn’t your thing. The town is considered the wine capital of Bourgogne, not because of a special vineyard or an outstanding wine, but because of one event held every year, on a weekend in mid-November (in 2020, that was November 13–15).
So, what’s the story with Beaune? As you know, in the Middle Ages the only educated people were the clergy. The monks (the men) handled sacred duties, and in their “free” time worked various forms of agriculture. In suitable areas they produced wine, cognac, and similar drinks. And the nuns (the women)? Since the dawn of humankind, women have handled sewing and embroidery, cooking, witchcraft, and medicine.
When the monks of Bourgogne were producing the finest wines in the world, the duke of the region, who resided in the town of Beaune, built a hospital for the region’s poor. Les Hospices de Beaune, also called Hôtel-Dieu (meaning “house of God”), was built starting in 1443. The first patient was admitted on January 1, 1452, under the care of the nursing nuns. The main hall, the “Hall of the Poor,” 50 meters long and 16 meters wide, is decorated with period paintings depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments, as was customary for the time.
At its center stood tables for treatment and meals, and around its perimeter were individual cells with hospital beds and medical treatment corners. Around the main building, various service buildings were constructed, connected by corridors, staircases, and covered passageways, all surrounding a large courtyard that carriages entered through a large wooden gate. Until World War II the complex served as a hospital, and afterward it served as a retirement home run by the city for those who couldn’t afford other institutions. In 1980 the retirement home closed and became part of the town’s museums.
And how does all this connect to wine? At first, the hospital treated the town’s poor. Over the years, the nursing nuns built up extensive medical experience, and word of it spread far and wide. Many patients preferred to be treated at Beaune’s municipal hospital rather than at other hospitals or by other doctors. The nursing nuns, who worked as volunteers out of religious calling, refused to accept payment for the care they gave. Many owners of nearby wine estates who had received medical treatment there gave the hospital small plots of vineyard as a token of appreciation for the dedication shown by the medical staff, and over the years the hospital’s holdings grew to include fairly large vineyard areas.
The monks who lived and worked at the hospital in other, non-medical roles (carpenters, locksmiths, cooks, and so on) were put to work tending the vineyards. Over time, the Beaune hospital came to own vineyard plots from which the monks produced ever-growing quantities of wine that kept improving over the years, as their experience built up. Some of the grapes were sold to nearby wine estates, and the rest were processed into wine at a winery set up in the hospital’s cellar.
And what do you do when you have more wine than the monks can possibly drink? That’s how the Beaune hospital came up with its annual auction. Over time, word of the local wine’s quality spread far and wide. Wine merchants came from ever-greater distances, wine prices kept rising, and the bottles grew rarer and more sought after year after year. Today, the Beaune auction is celebrated across the whole town in a huge festival that draws buyers, professionals and enthusiasts alike, from all over the world, who pour enormous sums into the small town, both on rare bottles of wine and on luxurious stays at restaurants, private clubs, hotels, and other entertainment in town over one weekend in November.
The wine route of Chalon (Chalon-sur-Saône)
Over the years, wine people discovered that the area around the small town of Chalon-sur-Saône, in the south of the Bourgogne region, is marked by low, round, gentle hills, where the soil is different, the climate milder, the vines different, the water clear and flowing but somehow different too… we’re back to that elusive, mysterious term, “terroir.” The hills were crowned with the name “La Côte Chalonnaise,” the hills of Chalon.
The wines of the Chalon area differ from Bourgogne wines, but geographically they still belong to the same region, so a new wine route was created. The French, who are careless and easygoing about plenty of things but exacting to an extreme when it comes to wine, catalogued down to the smallest detail the wines produced in this corner of the region:
- Various wines, good but not “great” like those from the north (“La Côte d’Or,” the “golden hills”), made from Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Gamay grapes grown on a strip 25 km long and 7 km wide.
- Bouzeron: the only AOC wine in the area.
- Rully: twenty-three different wine estates.
- Mercurey: thirty different wines.
- Givry: seventeen wines.
- Montagny: forty-nine types of wine, all white.
You and I will taste a glass of wine from here and a glass from there (this is tasting, not just drinking), and we’ll probably manage to tell whether the wine is red or white. The locals can pick out the taste of almonds from lingering notes of raspberry, the smell of mushrooms from the taste of pine, or even faint traces of cork and a hint of pepper (what connoisseurs call the arrière-goût, the “aftertaste”).
The wine route of Chablis
And then came Chablis. For those who don’t know, Chablis is a small village, nondescript and unremarkable, not even especially pretty (I’ve been there), located in the northwestern part of the Bourgogne region. Around this anonymous village, only white grapes grow. For us… a white grape.
The French found a way to divide it into several different grades:
- Petit-Chablis (“little Chablis”)
- Chablis Premier Cru (“first-grade Chablis”)
- Chablis Grand Cru (“great-grade Chablis”)
This is a good place for a note: just as there’s no exact translation for the word “terroir,” there’s no equivalent for the term “cru” in any language either. Maybe the closest word is “produce,” “harvest,” “yield”… go learn French!
I’m a devoted fan of red wine, in all its forms. The only wines capable of leading me astray into bad habits (meaning, white) are the Chenin Blanc (from the Loire region) and the Chablis produced around this small village in the north of Burgundy. Anyone who hasn’t sipped an ice-cold glass of white Chablis has never really tasted wine!
The same wine experts who worked so hard mapping out the touring routes in the region linked village to estate, road to crossroads, and winery to barrel, creating yet another wine route in the region. Shorter, yes, but dedicated exclusively to white wine. The route begins at the eastern end in the village of Chablis, continues on to the Clotilde Davenne estate in the village of Préhy, and then to the celebrated Bersan estate in the village of Saint-Bris-le-Vineux.
The father, Jean-François, and his son, Pierre-Louis, descendants of a family that has made wine on the site since 1453, work in underground mazes and tunnels carved from old, abandoned limestone quarries beneath the village’s alleyways. From there, the wine route continues on to the town of Auxerre, on the western border of the Bourgogne region. This may be one of the shorter wine routes, just 33 km, but along the way you’ll sip some of the finest and most distinctive white wines the world has to offer.
The area is also one of the strongholds of early Christianity in Europe, and it’s a fascinating destination for tourism regardless of wine. Towns like Auxerre, Vézelay, and Cluny were, for long stretches of history, home to monasteries and religious orders that shaped the future of European Christianity from the early centuries of the Middle Ages, with especially rich, ancient churches and libraries that drew some of the finest theologians from across Europe.
Further reading: the Château de Tanlay, a moated Renaissance château near Tonnerre, a short drive from Chablis.
Want to explore Burgundy’s wine routes?
If you’d like to put together your own wine route through Burgundy, here are a few articles on the site that can help:
Flights to France
The first step is finding a cheap flight to France. Since there are no direct flights to Dijon (the capital of Burgundy), you’ll need to fly into Paris or Lyon. If you haven’t booked your plane ticket yet, go ahead and read this article, where you’ll find a list of the best sites for booking a flight.
Car rental
You can’t really tour the vineyards and small villages here without a car, since local buses are rare and slow. So whether you rent your car in Dijon, Paris or Lyon, I highly recommend reading Renting a Car in France, where you’ll find tips and websites that will help you rent a car at a very reasonable price.
Where to stay
Since touring the wine route takes several days, it’s best to find a home base from which you can head out to the different wineries. Here are a few places I recommend for hotels or vacation rentals:
- Dijon: right in the heart of the region, so you can reach anywhere easily from there. It’s also a relatively large city where you’ll easily find everything travelers need (food shops, restaurants and so on), which makes it very convenient.
- Beaune: a charming town sitting right in the heart of Burgundy’s main wine route. Beyond its strategic location, it also has a wonderful market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, so if you decide to stay here, try to time your visit around one of those days.
- Chalon-sur-Saône: another great option for a home base while you’re touring the vineyards and wineries of Burgundy.
Guided tours
If you’d rather not rent a car but still want to see Burgundy’s most famous wineries, you can choose one or more of the organized tours available at this link.
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