Value Through Time: Burgundy 1932-2016

BY NEAL MARTIN | AUGUST 03, 2021

The value of Burgundy has changed throughout history. Or perhaps more accurately, its currency has altered in accordance with socioeconomic changes.

The first evidence for viticulture in Burgundy – a gravestone in Corgoloin chiseled with a Celtic god brandishing a vine – dates back to 150 BC. At that time, wine was not only a beverage, but served a darker purpose as barter for slaves. For medieval Cistercian monks, it was symbolic of the blood of Christ. The monks were piously motivated toward quality and became dab hands at divining the choicest parcels in the Côte d’Or. Come the era of the Valois dukes such as Philippe the Bold, Burgundy had to be the best in Christendom, used to curry favor with royalty and the Pope as the dukes pursued dreams of an autonomous state. To this end, Philippe the Bold forbade the planting of Gamay and denounced it as “a very poor and disloyal vine.” (And this was before Beaujolais Nouveau!) The value of Burgundy later became medicinal. In 1680, to aid the convalescence of King Louis XIV, Dr. Fagon prescribed Burgundy over Champagne; Burgundy doubled in price, but at least everyone felt better.

Philippe II Le Hardi, one of the Valois dukes, known as “Philippe the Bold.” Known to get angry if served Beaujolais.

After the French Revolution, Burgundy began coalescing into the region recognizable today. Scholars such as André Jullien, Denis Morelot and Dr. Jules Lavalle dipped quill into inkwell and formulated hierarchies that laid the foundation for AOC laws. The Premier Crus were approved in 1942 and individual climats codified a year later. The value of a wine hinged upon vineyard renown. Since practically the entire production was raised, sold and distributed by merchants, it was pretty straightforward. When growers such as Charles Rousseau and Henri Gouges began to bottle their own wines from the 1920s, values began to be determined by the combination of vineyard and winemaker reputation, though by the early 1970s, remarkably only 15% of the Côte d’Or was domaine-bottled. Nevertheless, Burgundy still generally cost less than Bordeaux. Perhaps its value was as an alternative fine French wine for wine lovers who couldn’t afford Claret. Even the most famous names were freely available. I remember bottles of DRC, Rousseau and Roumier gracing private lunches and merchant tastings in the late 1990s: I once paid fifty quid for a tasting featuring Leroy’s 1996s. This accessibility nurtured the current generation of besotted Burgundy-lovers. But it did not last. 

The lauded 2005 vintage was the catalyst for Burgundy’s explosion in popularity beyond the niche of wine geeks. Burgundy was elevated to a Mecca, a Holy Grail, the apotheosis of terroir underpinning wine and artisan winemaking over corporate ownership. The role of vineyard plus winemaker in determining price was magnified so that the value of blue-chip Burgundy inflated exponentially. There were no longer consumers of Burgundy but speculators. Consider that even in the 1980s, sometimes the latest release from DRC languished unsold, and now those same agents were being blitzed by competing requests for tiny allocations. Some merchants and restaurants exploited this unequal supply and demand, to varying degrees of pecuniary gain. Top wines became impervious to economic swings, to the point where insatiable demand feeds itself. Burgundy was the new Veblen good on the block, with no ceiling on what someone was willing to pay. Just the other day I saw a bottle of Musigny from Leroy selling for a cool €110,000 before tax. Irrational to some, pocket change to others. The value of Burgundy’s top wines is no longer measured solely in terms of pleasure in consumption and sharing, but also in pleasure of ownership.

How do you measure the value of mature Burgundy in 2021?

Prices on merchants’ lists?