6 min
How to read a Burgundy label
Burgundy labels name a place, not a grape. Here is how to work out what you are holding, in the order the label gives it to you.
Guides
9 pieces, written to be read once and remembered.
The wine
Labels, climats, and where the value hides.
5 min
What a climat actually is
Not the weather. A named parcel of ground with boundaries older than the French state — and the reason Burgundy has a thousand of them.
6 min
Buying wine in Beaune without being fleeced
The town lives on visitors. Where the honest shops are, what a tasting should cost, and the three questions that mark you out as someone who knows.
5 min
Chablis is Burgundy, but it is not the Côte
A hundred kilometres north, on different rock, with a different climate and its own hierarchy. Why Chablis tastes nothing like a Côte de Beaune white.
The water
Four canals, and a week that runs at 8 km/h.
The table
What is on the menu, and why it is on it.
Living here
Markets, opening hours, and the paperwork.
5 min
Markets, and how the week works
The Saturday market in Beaune, what closes on Mondays, and why the two-hour lunch is not a stereotype but a schedule you have to plan around.
5 min
The Hospices de Beaune, and its roof
A fifteenth-century charity hospital with the most photographed roof in France, and a wine auction that still funds it. What to see, and when to avoid it.
6 min
Bringing a car to France, and registering it
The paperwork for putting a foreign car on French plates: what the process is called, what you need, and the two things that catch people out.