What happens to Burgundies after opening depends on many many factors, spoof and acidity being major players in the game. I have surprised many a geek by sneaking the generic Bourgogne from [gasp!] Dom Laurent into their glasses after it has been open for several days.
The wine sees no new oak (and as far as I'm aware, isn't racked before bottling, so there's little oxidization in the winemaking process) and it is preserved with CO2 from the fermentation rather than SO2. Because of all this, when it is young, it actually needs 2-5 days open to get its true pinot fin shit together. (In most years, this wine stands testament to what M Laurent is capable of, and makes me think that some of the hooch is that gets transformed into furniture juice by his hand must have had the potential to be seriously good at some stage in its strange life.)
This doesn't mean that most Burgundy isn't swill after 20 mins air, but as someone once said on another board, the most helpful generalization about wine is there are no generalizations. Or something.
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