Controversial(?) Burgundy Query

originally posted by SteveTimko:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:

French fascism?
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Historian Jacques Barzun, in "From Dawn to Decadence," talks about how another historian said if you had traveled back in time and told him in the early 1900s that a European country would commit genocide against the Jews he would have blamed the French.
Barzun was born in France, by the way.
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He was in all likelihood thinking of George Mosse, though it is a rather basic point. Remember the Dreyfus Affair?

The French have long considered themselves "allergic" to fascism. See, e.g. Serge Berstein "La France des annee trente allergique au fascisme, a propos d'un livre de Zeev Sternhell," Vingtieme siecle, no. 2 (April 1984): 83-94. Berstein was responding to the work of the French-educated Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell, whose work on the ideological nature of fascism and its primarily French roots set off a bitter controversy in the 1980s. Bertrand de Jouvenel sued Sternhell for defamation and won, though Sternhell didn't have to make any retractions. Among others, Raymond Aron testified at the trial. On the courthouse steps, if memory serves, he brushed aside reporters' queries: "I've said all I have to say" -- and promptly died of a heart attack. France never saw a fascist seizure of power, but then, by that standard, there were only ever two full-blown cases. The para-military Croix de Feu mobilized many thousands bent on overthrowing the Republic and drew inspiration from Hitler and Mussolini. The best work on the subject might interest people here in particular for its discussion of the Loire: Robert O. Paxton, French Peasant Fascism: Henry Dorgres' Greenshirts and the Crises of French Agriculture, 1929-1939 (Oxford, 1997).

originally posted by Nicolas:
I've been thinking about Burgundy and have been trying to formulate an argument based on some research I have done.
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Can you share any of your sources?
 
Does this mean that terroir as we conceive of it today in Burgundy is largely self-fulfilling? We have bought into the idea that Morey tastes different than Chambolle, but is this in any way complicated by the fact that commune boundaries were often determined based on property lines rather than geological difference?
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self-fulfilling in what sense, i.e. who is fulfilling it, the tasters or groups of winemakers spanning generations ?
Using your example, it's quite typical for a Morey to smell like venison, which is something you almost never find in a Chambolle. Where that comes from is another question. Personally, I've never spotted Bambi in Morey.
 
originally posted by Cliff:
originally posted by SteveTimko:
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:

French fascism?
Click to expand...

Historian Jacques Barzun, in "From Dawn to Decadence," talks about how another historian said if you had traveled back in time and told him in the early 1900s that a European country would commit genocide against the Jews he would have blamed the French.
Barzun was born in France, by the way.
Click to expand...

He was in all likelihood thinking of George Mosse, though it is a rather basic point. Remember the Dreyfus Affair?

The French have long considered themselves "allergic" to fascism. See, e.g. Serge Berstein "La France des annee trente allergique au fascisme, a propos d'un livre de Zeev Sternhell," Vingtieme siecle, no. 2 (April 1984): 83-94. Berstein was responding to the work of the French-educated Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell, whose work on the ideological nature of fascism and its primarily French roots set off a bitter controversy in the 1980s. Bertrand de Jouvenel sued Sternhell for defamation and won, though Sternhell didn't have to make any retractions. Among others, Raymond Aron testified at the trial. On the courthouse steps, if memory serves, he brushed aside reporters' queries: "I've said all I have to say" -- and promptly died of a heart attack. France never saw a fascist seizure of power, but then, by that standard, there were only ever two full-blown cases. The para-military Croix de Feu mobilized many thousands bent on overthrowing the Republic and drew inspiration from Hitler and Mussolini. The best work on the subject might interest people here in particular for its discussion of the Loire: Robert O. Paxton, French Peasant Fascism: Henry Dorgres' Greenshirts and the Crises of French Agriculture, 1929-1939 (Oxford, 1997).

originally posted by Nicolas:
I've been thinking about Burgundy and have been trying to formulate an argument based on some research I have done.
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Can you share any of your sources?
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Bourly, Batrice. Vignes Et Vins De l'Abbaye De Cteaux En Bourgogne. Nuits-Saint-Georges Confrrie des chevaliers du tastevin: Ed. du Tastevins, 1998.

Dion, Roger,. Histoire De La Vigne Et Du Vin En France Des Origines Au XIXe Sicle. Paris: 1959.

Lavalle, M. J. Histoire Et Statistique De La Vigne Et Des Grands Vins De La Cote d'Or. Fondation Geisweiler ed. Nuits-Saint-Georges, France: Filiber, 1972, 1855.

Lebeau, Marcel. Essai Sur Les Vignes De Cteaux, Des Origines 1789. Dijon: Centre rgional de documentation pdagogique de l'Acadmie de Dijon, 1986.

Rodier, Camille. Le Clos De Vougeot. Dijon, France: Librairie L. Venot, 1949.

Unwin, P. T. H. Wine and the Vine : An Historical Geography of Viticulture and the Wine Trade. London; New York: Routledge, 1991.
 
Framing the early Middle Ages : Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800 / Wickham, Chris, 1950-

Regional dynamics : southern Burgundy from the Iron Age to the present Crumbley, Carole AND Marquardt, Williams
 
For example, if Le Musigny was classified at a certain point in history based on its wines made from Pinot Noir and who knows what else, is the classification just as valid now even though it has been replanted with only one variety?
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I think that's skipping ahead a bit, conflating terroir, varietal typicity, and stylistic typicity and trying to treat them as something singular. If you're going to need to make the argument that 100% pinot noir is terroir-masking or deformative in a way that
 
Good Point.

You can find that the roots of terroir, as they are currently understood, are false; yet that doesn't mean terroir doesn't exist.

As Thor mentions and many here observe (myself included), some variable is acting on wines from different sites in the Cote d'Or when many/most of the obvious variables are held constant.

I don't know why some people have such a hard time admitting they don't know or can't explain something.

Mark
 
It occurs to me that I didn't finish that last paragraph to my satisfaction.

Does this mean that terroir as we conceive of it today in Burgundy is largely self-fulfilling? We have bought into the idea that Morey tastes different than Chambolle, but is this in any way complicated by the fact that commune boundaries were often determined based on property lines rather than geological difference?
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Have we "bought into it," and if so why? Because we've been told to? Or because there's a difference? Or both? As I suggested, this is where I think you can go wrong by following entirely correct basic assumptions to an entirely unsupported endpoint. It seems to me that "did the monks identify terroir and plant accordingly?" is one potentially answerable question, but it's not related to the questions I've quoted here. They're questioning the existence of terroir, or its existence as currently delineated.

It strikes me that terroir is actually pretty easy to demonstrate ("prove" would require chemistry, and while I have a recollection that said chemistry has already been done by someone, I can't remember where or by who), in which case your argument is reduced to one of borders and line-drawing. So, OK, you proceed to demonstrate that this rhomboid vineyard should actually be trapezoidal, and that other one is actually the same as the one next to it, and this lieu-dit should be about half the size, and so forth. This would help in proving that the monks either weren't working with terroir or didn't have a complete understanding of it (or possibly that conditions have changed over the intervening years), but redrawing the Burgundy map is a hell of an undertaking, and to do it at all you're acceding to the idea that terroir does, in fact, exist and can be identified by scientific study...otherwise, you have no mechanism by which to redraw the map. For while a corrected map isn't necessary to support an assertion that the monks weren't planting by site characteristics (though it may well be necessary to "prove" that assertion), it is necessary to support an assertion that our modern conception of (say) Burgundian terroir is all wrong.
 
I am not trying to disprove the existence of terroir. I am more interested in understanding its origins as it applies to Burgundy.

The narrative as it currently exists does not seem adequate to me. The notion that Burgundy's complexity and extreme parcelization resulted from 14th century monastic intervention is not supported by any evidence of which I am aware.
 
You say you're not, but "Does this mean that terroir as we conceive of it today in Burgundy is largely self-fulfilling?" requires questioning more than the monks' farming practices, it requires questioning the existence and/or expression of terroir. In fact, it need not have anything to do with the monks to be asked and answered. And yet, in the context of your assertion, it does.

It seems at first glance that "the monks didn't plant by studying terroir" is a nice, compact assertion that you can study and, to an extent, test. Going on to say "...and so our understanding of terroir in Burgundy is fundamentally flawed" is a much more difficult thing to investigate without questioning either terroir itself or the entire map of sites. What I'm suggesting is that it's going to be very hard to demonstrate much about the allegedly compact first assertion without bridging to the second.

OK, so the monks didn't plant/delineate with terroir in mind, because sources X, Y, and Z say they actually had these other reasons. But are the borders wrong? Are the sites misidentified? Sure, the answer is almost certainly "yes" in some cases and "no" in others, but without getting into the specifics of which sites and what terroir characteristics, you're handwaving something that might actually suggest that no matter what those sources say, the sites are largely correctly-identified. Because if they are, then you need to explain how they got that way. If you can do so, then you've got strong support for your case. If you can't, then you've got a strong counter-argument with which you must deal.
 
There is evidence that suggests a great deal of viticultural continuity in the Cote d'Or spanning from at least the 1st century CE until today.

Patterns of landholding in late antique society resemble the current Cote d'Or model as regards parcelization.

If one examines the formularies it is quite clear that the major monasteries acquired a great deal of land from a variety of sources, many of which were bequeathed to them by free peasants. The formularies sometimes specify named vineyards or lieux-dits. These parcels could be extremely small. Most of these parcels derived their names from latin and sometimes pre-latin or celtic words. To me this suggests a rather long history of usage.

According to Wilson: "With only a few exceptions, commune boundaries follow property lines." p127

I don't think it is far-fetched to imagine the possibility that this might have happened within communes as well when designating vineyards?

Clos de Vougeot is a vineyard that was created from smaller holdings that were eventually consolidated. This would be an example where property lines trump terroir, no?
 
Philip the Bold was the Duke that outlawed that 'mauvais' grape Gamay. I'm not sure he'd have been too taken with the big Beaujolais Nouveau celebrations every November.

Around 1900, most of Chassagne was Pinot Noir, not Chardonnay. Things change (white wine is worth more $$ from there).

Any time you have a lot of people and a lot of time to account for, there are a lot of different forces at work. Political, economic, climate, technology, religion, agricultural. To think that any one of them would absolutely hold sway for up to 2 millenia over all the others is, well, not taking into account the way people do things.

Do you remember the story when they were building the A6 and wanted to run it right through the Montrachet vineyard? It only got stopped rather late in the process. They probably had a sign up that said "Your tax Francs at work."

There are a few vineyards that cross commune boundaries, and there are some vineyards that are classed in one part as Grand Cru and only 1er Cru in another part. Or 1er Cru in part and villages in another. And many vineyards are known to have parts that are superior to other parts. The monks used to call the top of the Clos de Vougeot the Pope's part, the middle the Abbott's and the bottom the monk's (iirc). Are the individual named climats within different vineyards uniform in terms of terroir? Why should they be, nothing else is?

Have you ever mistaken Bordeaux for Burgundy? As Harry Waugh said, "not since lunch".

But, yes, by and large, you can taste wines blind and tell the different between different communes. But the 1er crus on the Vosne side of Nuits taste more like Vosne than the ones on the other side of Nuits, while still being Nuits. What was the question again?
 
originally posted by Chris Weber:
Any time you have a lot of people and a lot of time to account for, there are a lot of different forces at work. Political, economic, climate, technology, religion, agricultural. To think that any one of them would absolutely hold sway for up to 2 millenia over all the others is, well, not taking into account the way people do things.
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True. People are the dominant force for what exists boundarywise today, terroir is secondary in fact, but held up as primary for such human needs as tradition and marketing.

But, yes, by and large, you can taste wines blind and tell the different between different communes. But the 1er crus on the Vosne side of Nuits taste more like Vosne than the ones on the other side of Nuits, while still being Nuits.
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My experience is that this is much harder than you're making it sound.
 
originally posted by Ned Hoey:
But, yes, by and large, you can taste wines blind and tell the different between different communes. But the 1er crus on the Vosne side of Nuits taste more like Vosne than the ones on the other side of Nuits, while still being Nuits.
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My experience is that this is much harder than you're making it sound.
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Well I'm not trying to make it sound too easy. But people with a lot of experience will get them right far more often than if it were random guessing.

My point is that there really is such a thing as terroir and it shows up in the taste; there is a character that Nuits has and one that Vosne has, but one doesn't just stop at the commune line and the other begin either. This stuff is not that simple. If it were we wouldn't find it so interesting. Complexity is a requirement for it to be interesting.
 
It strikes me that terroir is actually pretty easy to demonstrate ("prove" would require chemistry...
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I think you could deomstrate anything if you set your mind to it, and yet, it still might not be 'truthful'. Forget terroir for the moment. I'm pretty sure you could demonstrate differences in wine made from each vine if you set your mind to it. Perhaps we need more monks (or like minded souls) to carry out the experiments?
 
originally posted by MarkS:
I think you could deomstrate anything if you set your mind to it, and yet, it still might not be 'truthful'. Forget terroir for the moment. I'm pretty sure you could demonstrate differences in wine made from each vine if you set your mind to it.
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This is true but also not useful. Reductio ad absurdum, right? Bottle wine on a per vine basis or just call it all "France".

The regions exist as they do partly due to politics/marketing/ownership but also partly due to differences in the closely-watched ag products they grow.

Perhaps the vines in a commune might be said to have a tribal relationship? Each is an individual but there is a certain similarity in every face.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by MarkS:
I think you could deomstrate anything if you set your mind to it, and yet, it still might not be 'truthful'. Forget terroir for the moment. I'm pretty sure you could demonstrate differences in wine made from each vine if you set your mind to it.
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This is true but also not useful. Reductio ad absurdum, right?
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Well yeah. But isn't this how clones got to be identified?
 
originally posted by MarkS:
Well yeah. But isn't this how clones got to be identified?
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Let me rephrase. It is not useful for identifying distinct terroir within a geographic region. (You're right that it is useful to identify distinct clones within a vineyard.)
 
It's my experience that on the list of reasons why clones are selected and propagated, peak wine quality is not always on the list, and when it's present it's not always high on that list. Thankfully, there are exceptions, including those that aren't relentlessly monoclonal.

I think you could deomstrate anything if you set your mind to it, and yet, it still might not be 'truthful'.
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I also find this not useful, but for a different reason than Jeff: demonstrating vine-by-vine terroir (which does bring you to actual microclimate, a word used incorrectly almost as often as varietal) doesn't say anything about the "truth" of a site designation's terroir. The goal -- to the extent terroir study has one -- isn't the identification of the smallest differentiate-able geography, the goal is the identification of the differentiation. If, to posit for the sake of argument, there's a Vosne terroir that can be differentiated from an MSD terroir, it doesn't matter that there's also an identifiable and differentiate-able Romane-Conti terroir within the former. Both terroirs can theoretically exist and be demonstrated as a result. This, incidentally, is one of the reasons that terroir -- despite being a fully scientific concept at its foundation -- cannot be entirely wrestled into submission by science alone. Were it otherwise, Nicolas' questions would have as their answer only a definitive but much less interesting redrawing of a map.

Similarly, there are those who assert that only monocpage can express terroir, and others who argue that only blends can express terroir. I don't see how either can be true, both based on tastings and based on science.
 
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