Founding Burgundy - Romans, Royalty and Revolution
While Bordeaux was forging its regional identity on the merits of their leading estates, the fame of Burgundy was rising based on vineyards and villages.
It wasn’t until Julius Caesar’s conquest of Gaul during the 1st Century BCE that the region now known as Burgundy became part of the Roman Empire. Over the next 500 years the Romans brought roads, trade and an urban population that supported the foundation of permanent vineyard plantations and ancient viticulture along the Cote d’Or. The region was settled by the Burgundians in 443CE, but it didn’t begin to gain acclaim until the arrival of the larger-than-life conqueror Emperor Charlemagne. The story goes that Charlemagne fell in love with the wines of the Corton hill, but his wife hated the look of red wine stains through his white beard so the emperor demanded increased plantings of white varieties on the Corton hill. Today it is the largest Grand Cru for white wines sharing his name, Corton Charlemagne.
As was the case with a number of wine regions, the influence of monasteries between the 10th & 13th centuries laid the foundation for the vineyards revered today. Famously the Cistercian monks are responsible for recording characteristics we now refer to as terroir. The monks recorded differences between plots, enclosed notable sites (clos), and effectively invented the climat concept, the idea that tiny parcels produce distinct wines, laying the intellectual and practical foundations of Burgundy’s parcel‑based system. These findings led to Philip the Bold’s 1395 edict that restricted Gamay and favoured planting of Pinot Noir - a crucial moment in Burgundy history. This decision focused red wine production around the elite qualities of low-yielding, high quality sites and consolidated Pinot Noir as Burgundy’s signature varietal.
The focus on site quality led by the church, who regularly shared their table with aristocratic families, as well as the Burgundian royalty themselves, manufactured the reverence for what would eventually become Grand Cru vineyards. The most powerful abbeys built walls (Clos) around their best sites to protect the vines. Sites like Clos de Vougeot (1336), Clos de Tart (1141), Clos de Lambrays (1365) have documented foundation years but most, like Clos de la Roche & Clos Saint Denis (both 13th century) are characterized by the century they rose to prominence. The incredible Grand Cru’s of Vosne Romanee followed a similar trajectory to that of the enduring Clos sites. Where the famous Clos sites are often expansive, covering entire slopes in villages, sites like La Romanee Conti, La Romanee and Le Musigny (in Chambolle) were much smaller sites. Micro-climats like these became status symbols envied by the elite of France, demonstrated by the fierce bidding war between the Prince of Conti & Madame de Pompadour in 1760 where the Prince of Conti reportedly paid several times the price of any neighbouring Grand Cru sites. Aficionados of Burgundy will note the absence of the iconic Chardonnay sites of the Cote de Beaune (except Corton Charlemagne), this is because Chardonnay did not rise to prominence until the post-Phylloxera world.
In its pre-revolution state, Burgundian vineyards were almost solely Monopoles, exclusively produced by a single owner. The French Revolution however, beginning in 1789, saw the seizure and sale of church and noble lands. Large monastic and aristocratic vineyard holdings were broken into many small parcels and sold to bourgeois (middle-class) buyers, creating the fragmented ownership pattern that still defines Burgundy’s mosaic of small domaines. By the close of the Revolutionary decade Burgundy had a well‑established map of named climats, a culture of parcel‑level identity, and a new class of private owners. These changes preserved the region’s terroir knowledge while transforming land tenure - crucial preconditions for the modern appellation and domaine systems that followed.
Episode 4 will detail the rise of the Domaine/Negociant dichotomy, the consolidation of terroir and the lasting effect of phylloxera - without which Chardonnay would not have risen to the global superpower it is today.