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.
Burgundy assumes you already know where everything is.
Labels name a plot and stop there. Menus name a dish and stop there. This site fills in the rest, in English — the hierarchy, the 19 villages of the Côte in order, the canals, and the parts of living here that catch people out.
The hierarchy
Four tiers, and only one of them is rare
Every Burgundy label sits somewhere on this pyramid. The bars are drawn to the share of the region’s production, which is the part nobody expects.
On the label
The geography
The Côte d’Or, from Dijon down
Sixty kilometres of east-facing slope, one village after another. The order is the useful part: a wine’s neighbours explain more about it than any tasting note.
Côte de Nuits — reds, almost entirely
Côte de Beaune — reds in the north, whites in the south
North at the top. Click a village.
The water
Four canals, and the number nobody quotes
Brochures give you kilometres. What sets the pace of a week afloat is locks — each one costs roughly a quarter of an hour, and a hire boat makes about 8 km/h between them.
| Canal | From — to | Km | Locks | Locks / km | End to end |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canal latéral à la Loire Few locks for its length. Crosses the Loire on an aqueduct at Briare. | Digoin — Briare | 196 | 38 | 0.19 | 34 h |
| Canal du Centre Links the Loire basin to the Saône. Industrial history, quiet water. | Digoin — Chalon-sur-Saône | 112 | 61 | 0.54 | 29 h |
| Canal du Nivernais The pretty one. Narrow, wooded, follows the Yonne through the Morvan foothills. | Auxerre — Decize | 174 | 110 | 0.63 | 49 h |
| Canal de Bourgogne The long one. Climbs to a summit tunnel at Pouilly-en-Auxois, then falls again. | Migennes — Saint-Jean-de-Losne | 242 | 189 | 0.78 | 78 h |
“End to end” assumes 8 km/h cruising and 15 minutes per lock, with no stops. Real passage times are longer — locks close for lunch, and so should you.
The guides
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.