Music Hello and welcome today to our online wine course session on the wines of Burgundy. We start with the location of Burgundy or Bourgogne as the French say on the map of France. As we can see on the map, Burgundy is located on the eastern part of the country.
It is south of the most northeastern region called Grand Est, which includes the region of Alsace, and on the other hand, located north of the region, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Burgundy, Bourgogne, is subdivided into different regional appellations. If we would travel from north to south in Burgundy, we would first reach the wine-growing area Chablis.
In the main zone of viticulture in Burgundy, we find between Dijon and Nuit-Saint-Georges a region called Côte de Nuit. South of Côte de Beaune, there is the wine-growing region Côte Chalonaise, which is located around the town Chalon-sur-Saône. Last but not least, in the south of Burgundy, there is the wine region Maconais, around the town with the same name, Macon.
If we would then go further down south, we would reach the wine-growing region Beaujolais. Beaujolais is a wine law and technical wise not part of Burgundy as it differs quite a lot in climate and also in main grape variety. The wine growing territory of Burgundy stretches from north to south approximately 230 kilometers. If we have a look at the wine map of France as a whole, we can see that Burgundy is located on the east part of the country and rather in the middle northern part of France. Interestingly and important for the formal structure of a country, in this case France, and quite Helpful for bureaucratic purposes is that the political districts in France are ordered in alphabetical order from A to Z and they're numbered due to their alphabetical order.
So the political district A is with the number 01 and also the postal code would start with. 01. So this is something that in school students have to learn by heart. And we can see that, for example, Bourgogne has the number 21 on the car number plaque. And the postal codes would also start with 21. Above, we can see an example which is called Ile de France, which is the capital Paris and the surrounding areas. That would be 75, and we would see that on the number plaque and also on the map with the political districts of France.
What the French winemakers and especially the... producers in Burgundy are very keen on is that people would rather say Bourgogne than Burgundy. It becomes clear why when we google the term Burgundy in the search engine google.com or google.co.uk because if you type in Burgundy The English expression for a dark red color comes up first.
So we will see a lot of dresses and a lot of color schemes with burgundy red rather than wine or wine regions. So if later in this course I refer to Bourgogne quite often, this is not to confront it with burgundy color. Bourgogne or Burgundy is very famous in France but also throughout the entire gourmet world for a lot of French typical products that come from Burgundy. First of all, it has to be mentioned that a lot of very important medieval cities are located in Burgundy.
and that the importance of Burgundy in the Middle Ages was enormous. It is also famous for its canals and canal boats. So the Canal de Bourgogne is a network of waterways that are very popular to be used by tourists and locals alike to do canaling, which is driving on waterways. with smaller boats. Typical products of Bourgogne come from a famous breed, a famous race of cattle, and the famous cows are all white, and this is the race Charolais.
So if you see white cows and bulls, this is the Charolais race, and they give milk for some of the famous cheeses produced in Bourgogne. The Charolais cattle also provide the beef for famous meat dishes, including boeuf bourguignon, which is burgundy beef, a stew made of red wine and the meat of Charolais cattle. A famous cheese that is made of milk from the Charolais cow is called Epoisse.
Another one is Amis de Chambertin. They are very intensive and go extremely well with a not so intense Pinot Noir red wine from Burgundy. A famous product not made of grapes but of blackcurrant is Crème de Cassis.
It is a liqueur that has approximately 20% alcohol and it mixes very well with white wine and would give the famous aperitif called Kir. If you add a drop of Crème de Cassis to a glass of champagne, you would have Kir Royal. Also world famous for Burgundy is the mustard, moutarde, of Dijon.