Melon de Bourgogne from Burgundy

S

Saina Nieminen

Saina Nieminen
Domaine du Val de Saône (Guy Bussière) Phénix

Having recently read Bertrand Celce's report on this producer I was happy that my friend Harri kindly gave me some of this to taste. A Vin de Table so there is no vintage on the label, but this bottle was a 2009. Clear as water. A really lovely aroma of cinnamon and apples, quite unlike any Muscadet I've had. This isn't a steely or austere wine, but still has the loveliest core of citrus running through it. It reminds me quite a bit of some of Puzelat's whites. I thought this was pretty and lovely. [dons tin helmet] And as much as I love Muscadet, when drinking this I can't help wondering if the best place to grow the grape is actually in Burgundy.

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Don't look now, but there's a self-proclaimed Burgundy expert/author of a book on the food and wine of Burgundy who thinks Melon is Muscat.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
Don't look now, but there's a self-proclaimed Burgundy expert/author of a book on the food and wine of Burgundy who thinks Melon is Muscat.
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Claude, that is such an odd claim that you will have to elaborate. Melon is muscat that has lost its genes for terpene production? Melon is muscat but we just persuade ourselves that it smells different because of marketing?

What does he mean (and who is he?).
 
The guy is an idiot. His name is David Downie. I wrote a short review of his book "Food Wine Burgundy" in The World of Fine Wine a couple of years ago.

He repeatedly confuses Muscat and Muscadet. He also thinks Clos-Vougeot is in Vosne-Romanée, considers snails and frog's legs to be "cuisine de terroir" notwithstanding the fact that these days they're all imported from other countries, gives all the credit for development of wine in Burgundy to the Benedictines from Cluny and none to the Cistercians, etc., etc.
 
Is his book really called "Food Wine Burgundy"? What a terrible title. Here, I am just going to string together some words that generally relate to the various subjects covered in my poorly researched book. Food Wine Burgundy. There, that's good.
 
originally posted by Michael Lewis:
Is his book really called "Food Wine Burgundy"? What a terrible title.
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You can see it here on his website. To be fair, it seems to be mandated as part of a series (for which he has written three books). I'm disappointed that the New York Review of Books is involved with this -- just shows that they're not food and wine people. I should also disclose that I own his cookbook on Roman cooking (which I don't believe I've ever cooked from, but it was at an interesting price on remainder) and his book on the Italian Riviera (which provided mediocre, but not terrible, advice for a short stay I had there a few years ago -- that is a region where I have no special expertise)
 
For those who don't know, Melon de Bourgogne was taken from Burgundy during the Little Ice Age when it was so cold the Atlantic Ocean froze. The vines in the eastern Loire were wiped out and they took what was then I guess the dominate white wine in Burgundy.
I thought it was discussed on Wine Disorder previously, but I can't find it. Maybe Wine Therapy?
Was this in 1509 or 1609?
 
originally posted by mlawton:
Nothing wrong with a little muscat love.
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Not at all. Had a delicious Grafen Neipperg 2011 Neipperger Schloßberg Muskateller Spätlese this morning.

But you wouldn't confuse it with a Burgundy.
 
originally posted by SteveTimko:
For those who don't know, Melon de Bourgogne was taken from Burgundy during the Little Ice Age when it was so cold the Atlantic Ocean froze. The vines in the eastern Loire were wiped out and they took what was then I guess the dominate white wine in Burgundy.
I thought it was discussed on Wine Disorder previously, but I can't find it. Maybe Wine Therapy?
Was this in 1509 or 1609?
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Oy. The ex-paleoclimatologist in me just perked up.

It was not "so cold the Atlantic Ocean froze" - though I don't doubt that it was cold enough for some ice to form on the shore, just like it is in the coldest winters in NYC. There was significantly more ice in the North Atlantic during the Little Ice Age, as well, but I don't think there's any evidence for icebergs down to Nantes. Jesus, it wasn't THAT cold (though surely cold enough to kill vines in a bad freeze . . . which only requires incrementally colder weather than in the contemporary climate).

EDIT to add that a quick googling reveals that the mean temp in the 1709 winter in the Loire was 3-4C below 1971-2000 30-year norms. Make no mistake, that's a cold winter, many SD's below the mean, but its not unrecognizably cold - still warmer than, e.g., a typical winter in NYC. Obviously the worst freeze of the winter would be colder than that for a brief period.
 
originally posted by D. Zylberberg:
originally posted by SteveTimko:
For those who don't know, Melon de Bourgogne was taken from Burgundy during the Little Ice Age when it was so cold the Atlantic Ocean froze. The vines in the eastern Loire were wiped out and they took what was then I guess the dominate white wine in Burgundy.
I thought it was discussed on Wine Disorder previously, but I can't find it. Maybe Wine Therapy?
Was this in 1509 or 1609?
Click to expand...

Oy. The ex-paleoclimatologist in me just perked up.

It was not "so cold the Atlantic Ocean froze" - though I don't doubt that it was cold enough for some ice to form on the shore, just like it is in the coldest winters in NYC. There was significantly more ice in the North Atlantic during the Little Ice Age, as well, but I don't think there's any evidence for icebergs down to Nantes. Jesus, it wasn't THAT cold (though surely cold enough to kill vines in a bad freeze . . . which only requires incrementally colder weather than in the contemporary climate).

EDIT to add that a quick googling reveals that the mean temp in the 1709 winter in the Loire was 3-4C below 1971-2000 30-year norms. Make no mistake, that's a cold winter, many SD's below the mean, but its not unrecognizably cold - still warmer than, e.g., a typical winter in NYC. Obviously the worst freeze of the winter would be colder than that for a brief period.
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I based my comment on Don Rice's comment of Jan. 14.

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winedisorder.com
 
originally posted by SteveTimko:
I based my comment on Don Rice's comment of Jan. 14.

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winedisorder.com
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It's funny to see well-meaning people repeat faulty info in areas which are not their expertise - it's a lesson as to how myths get started.

The first, and most important thing to remember is that anecdotal stories tend to be horribly exaggerated. There's no doubt that the 1709 winter had huge impacts upon the French population but that says as much about the early 18th century French society / economy as it does about the climate. If you take all the reports from that era at face value, you'd think the weather was never hotter, colder, wetter, snowier, all over the world. Becuse people's lives were so much more intertwined with the weather at that time compared to the present day (higher percentage of rural population, higher percentage of populations working in agriculturl, poor people legitimately food and heating-fuel stressed), the stories naturally get exagerrated.

As best I can find from googling around and looking at some paleoclimate databases, the best information is as follows:

- The winter of 1709 was the coldest in Europe in the last 400 years, but not by much - for example, taking the winter as a whole, the 1942 winter was nearly as cold.
- Furthermore, the worst of the cold was in central Europe - the Loire (and the Atlantic coast of France in general) was not particularly affected relative to the rest of Europe

- The damaging freeze was relatively brief - a 2 week period (not 2 months, as stated by Claude Kolm in a post in the thread you cited)

- The temperatures during that 2 week period were very cold indeed - Paris apparently recorded at least two low temperatures below -23C (-9.5F). But this is not unprecedented - similar cold was experienced, for example, in 1879.
- During the freeze, low temperatures were generally in the teens.
 
Cold on its own is a problem, but it is much worse after a cycle of wars, as was the case in 1709. Conditions were bad, but certainly not the worst ever recorded; for French historians, it stands out along with the plague of 1720 as one of the last major catastrophes of its type. This picture gives a pretty good idea, though St Lambert des Levées was by no means the worst hit town in the Beauvaisis (which was hit hard overall).

demography.jpg
 
originally posted by D. Zylberberg:
- The winter of 1709 was the coldest in Europe in the last 400 years, but not by much - for example, taking the winter as a whole, the 1942 winter was nearly as cold.
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Yes, yes, and armies have drowned in rivers that average 4' deep. The question is what is the effect on trees, vines, grains, and so on.

- The damaging freeze was relatively brief - a 2 week period (not 2 months, as stated by Claude Kolm in a post in the thread you cited)
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How cold was that? The snippet from Duc de Saint-Simon suggests that the second freeze was the more deadly because there had been a partial thaw following the first freeze. I presume this is because water got deeper into everything and then cracked it open when the ice re-froze but it could also just be the sheer weight of the ice (I've seen some impressive trees felled by ice in their branches) or perhaps a snowfall on top of ice (which suffocates the plant life underneath that survives the cold but still needs light).
 
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