Through a Glass Lightly/Burgandy

by T. T. Greg

BURGUNDY

BURGUNDY

If ever a wine ran a chance of being puffed to its damnation, that wine is Burgundy. For it is a favourite freak of the vintner to proclaim in his fly-sheets that he is now “selling at a ridiculously low figure a fine, full-bodied Burgundy, combining delicate aroma with grand blood-making properties.” Now this is at worst to bring down one of the finest wines ever squeezed from grape to the level of a blood-mixture or a fruit-salt; and at best to hint darkly at what were better left to individual imagination, that these same vintners favour the cult of Aphrodite no less than that of Dionysos; and yet, after all, it would seem that they know their business, which is to vend at all hazards; and none is more keenly conscious that the specious flavour of an adjective may render palatable a whole dishful of unwholesome nouns. The seductive epithet, indeed, is the licensed victualler’s handiest weapon. For Saumur, unembellished by any qualifying epithet, we have scant affection, but to hear of it as “pale, dry, and creaming” and to see it foaming forth from the giant bottles on the posters at railway stations, is to create a thirst which must be quenched. And to lure us on to Burgundy by pronouncing it an Accretor of Blood is neither more nor less than to put a cheat upon us. For Burgundy, being the first red wine in the world, stands in need of no puffery. Not Claret itself can match it for richness and perfume. The aroma and bouquet, as your vintner hath it, of a bottle of Volnay, to go no higher, will flood your chamber with the sweetness of an “unheard melody.” Time was, some two hundred years since, when Burgundy and Champagne strove together for precedence. The question—An vinum Remense Burgundico suavius et salubrius was fought out in the schools between Physicians, grave and reverend, and Heads of Faculties.

Even as early as 1652 some fiery Burgundian had declared the wine of Beaune to be richer and wholesomer than any other, averring that Champagne predisposed to catarrh, gout, gravel, rheumatism, and such like disorders. Then rose up the men of Reims, and boasting the liquid purity, flavour and durability of the wine of their district, bravely asserted its unqualified superiority to all the wines of Burgundy. The senior physician of the Faculty of Medicine in Beaune defended his wine in a thesis which ran into five editions in less years; and thus the brave dispute was waged from generation to generation. Have we, then, no more to say of the wine to-day than that it possesses grand blood-making properties? Alas, we English hardly know it. For whoso would drink the true Burgundian elixir must seek the land of its adoption ere he shall light on perfection, since the grapes that yield it are the offspring of rare and favoured vineyards. True, there are good Burgundies in England, at a modest price even, which recall the prime growths at least in name; but it is a common trick to export the thinnest of wines under the style and title of the best. Thus, we can get Romanée Conti, which is the crowned king of all the Burgundies, at every restaurant. Of course we pay a high price for it, and yet it is well to remember that the vineyard which produces its incomparable grape is only six and a half acres in extent; that the wine is more highly prized in France and Flanders than in all the world beside; and that there still survive Frenchmen and Walloons of taste and purse. A word to the wise is enough, and lo, here are three!

As for Burgundy’s heir-apparent, Chambertin, the favoured of Napoleon, he also is a native of an exiguous vineyard. Yet none in Paris enjoys a higher reputation, and it is idle to expect him this side of the Channel. Indeed, you must needs put up with Richebourg, Clos Vougeot, Nuits, Corton, Pommard, Volnay; even with Beaune and Macon. If these do nought beside, they may make you blood; and is not that, teste the vintner, the whole duty of Burgundy? Amongst white Burgundies it is hopeless, indeed, to find a blameless wine. Mont Rachet, if we could hit on the right quality, is fit for the symposia of the gods; but, alack, there be three kinds, and the value of the second is but half that of the first, and the third only a bare two-thirds the value of the second. If we would judge aright of the first red wine of France we must go to Brussels, to Dinant, to Charleroi, to Namur. Not on the banks of the Loire but of the Meuse dwell the folk who know what Burgundy is, what Burgundy means. Indeed, the inhabitants of the Ardennes care little enough for the choicer arts. It is not for them to collect enamels. Neither pottery nor pictures seduce them to extravagance. But religiously do they select and treasure their Burgundy, hiving it in cellars, the building and furnishing whereof have been the work of generations. No Walloon with pride of birth, of place, of purse, would ever sell his Burgundy at some Flemish Christie’s. It was handed down to him by his father, and in due course, after the judicious disposal through sympathetic gullets of the older vintages, he in his turn will hand it down to his children. The great wine merchants whose enthusiasm is Burgundy are the Princes of the trade. Their dynasty is hereditary, and at Namur the grandson of Evrad, who supplied our grandsires, is still ready to take our own orders. At Brussels the name of Van Cutsem carries us still a step farther back. There for generations lies the wine in the great cellars of these greater men, each vintage awaiting its joyful resurrection. The cellars are deeply excavated as cellars should be, in the clay, or hollowed out of limestone rock. They preserve an even temperature of 50 degrees. Upon their doors the torrid sun may shine in vain. The whiffs of kitchen and the tremor of the streets are alike removed from the sacred shrine. Their bottles are yellow-black in colour, and from a cunning—begotten of long experience—are rough inside, differing herein from the bottles of Champagne which for a different reason are smooth on either surface. For it is well-nigh impossible to carry out the perfect maturing of Burgundy with a smooth-stomached bottle, for the deposit in the wines clings, as it should, to the roughened surface, and only the glory of the wine remains to drink, that which would work its ruin blending not with it.

In the autumn following the vintage, the great Burgundies, which, in the hopes of men, already eclipse the ancestral vintages, pour into Charleroi and Namur. One by one the great years—1811, ’34, ’37, ’39, ’40, ’42, ’44, ’46, ’48, and ’65—have toppled off their shelves and live only in the memories of amateurs. Even now the Flemings are waiting with tiptoe expectation the development of 1889, of which it has been rumoured that none other save 1811 will surpass it. Yearly the value grows, and yearly more splendid and glorious the well-earned increment. The wine is bottled at the end of fifteen weeks, and some would say that it has passed its prime when sixteen years are told, which opinion prevails not in Wallonia. Your cunning wine merchant never clarifies his wine, and never delays his bottling beyond the appointed time. Also, he corks the bottles with the nicety of a worker in mosaics. Strange it is that the best Burgundy should find its way from the land of its nativity to Belgium, the land of its adoption; yet it is a notable and pleasant fact that a wayfaring man in the Ardennes may light on a bottle of wine of such a quality that he might search all England through with Fortunatus’ purse and not meet withal. The best Bordeaux leaves not Bordeaux, but no one would go to the Bourgogne to drink its treasures.

The dispute which raged between Burgundy and Champagne in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could scarce be revived to-day. The partisans of Champagne would win by sheer force of numbers. Where two things are almost equally meritorious it were well to leave each alone, or swallow them in equal quantities. Horace praised Massic and Falernian, preferring this to-day, that to-morrow. For ourselves, we agree with a famous Canon of Reims who observed that “in the wine of Burgundy there is more strength and vigour; if it does not play with its man so much, it overthrows him more suddenly, as did Demosthenes. The wine of Champagne is subtler and more delicate; it amuses more and for a longer time, but in the end it does not produce less effect. Such was the result of Cicero’s oratory.” And the true amateur of the bin had rather have one bottle of either wine than the collected works of both orators.