huge expanse to the south-east vines is about a mile deep. the Jura would be full in sight on a clear day, and even at times Mont Blanc. Above the main village-for there are three Santenays-is a great amphitheatre, as it were, hollowed back into the main ridge; and above it rises the highest point, on top of which in Roman times stood a temple of Minerva. We climbed there, and from about two-thirds of the way up all was shrubby downland, the shrub being mostly box. Where the vineyards border on this starved soil, the pinot will grow, but its yield is not of the best for that one must go farther down, almost to The Saône was flowing in its leisurely way due south a few miles from us; beyond that all is plain, till you reach the Rhone gorges, right up against the great mountain mass. All the water that flows through all that we looked out on must issue in the Mediterranean; but cross the gentle ridges of the Côte on which we stood and you would find streams running towards the Atlantic-whether into the basin of the Loire or of the Santenay-les-bains, the princiSeine. It is extraordinary that so notable a watershed should rise so gently: this line of hills from Dijon southward is all in soft curves; and the line is never continuous: it wavers down with little undulations, making havens of shelter everywhere against the wind, yet always thrusting out its many bosoms to the caress of the sun. Some slopes may miss him at morning, some at evening; but before noon and long after noon the whole range basks. For wine, the actual ridge top is useless, its soil too stony; the plain is too rich and heavy for the pinot, which alone yields delicate wine: all the best that is grown grows à flanc de coteau, in the hollow of the upward curve, and what lies just above it. The practical bearing of this was explained to me at Santenay, where the tract under pal village, or into the fold of hill in the heart of the amphitheatre, where is Santenay-levieux, with its little twelfthcentury church that first belonged to the Templars. But once you pass the ancient Roman baths (now converted into a modern spa) and come into the river valley and across it, what grows there is de la pistrouille, not worthy to be called Santenay. Yet, under the law of 1919 concerning appellations d'origine, any man may legally sell as Santenay anything that grows in the commune—or any blend of what grows in the commune. The same is true of all these wines (though in a less degree of Chambertin, Vougeot, and Richebourg, which have more restricted areas); and the moral is that you must really depend on the character of your wine merchant. The law offers no adequate guarantee, even for sales in France, where people not so easily to be had beyond are keenly aware how important it is for the country to preserve the reputation of its winesand, on the whole, for Frenchmen, the best Burgundy ranks above all else. Bordeaux has its partisans (and I remain among them); but France at large would endorse the judgment of Harry Richmond's father who at his son's baptism laid down against his coming of age "twelve dozen of the best that man can drink "; and Burgundy was the wine. : Which Burgundy, Meredith does not specify and to choose the best would involve high debate. It is not true that Napoleon advised his soldiers to present arms when they marched past the Clos Vougeot : but it is true that Louis Philippe's son, the Duc d'Aumale, paid this tribute to his favourite wine, and that Marshal de Castellaare later repeated the military homage, while General de Gallifet paid the same honour to Nuits. But Napoleon, if he omitted the ceremony, marked his preference clearly: wherever he went, Chambertin went with him he drank it in the Kremlin. I wonder if he drank it in St Helena. But the fame of Burgundy goes much farther back. When the Papacy showed reluctance to return from Avignon, Petrarch wrote to Urbain V. urging the call of Italy, and hinted that Italy began to suspect seductions. "The wines of Beaune, it is said, are the Alps." It seems that the Papal table was always provided from Cluny, and it, no doubt, drew on the resources of the other Benedictine Abbey of Cîteaux-whose lands are now the Clos Vougeot. All this erudition is not of my discovery: I pillage it shamelessly from the delightful Nouveau Manuel de l'amateur de Bourgogne, by Maurice des Ombiaux, who is, of course, a Belgian. There are no such amateurs of Burgundy as the border people. Burgundy in the great days of its dukes borrowed its artists from Flanders: and the artists borrowed their inspiration from the Burgundian wine-press. Louis XIV. used to drink hypocras until it was found to disagree with him; and a prudent doctor, well versed in such matters, set out on a voyage to find a substitute. It was a long journey, for he made conscientious study of all the possibilities, but at last he fixed upon the the vintage which seemed to him sovereign against a sovereign's indigestion: and henceforward Louis drank only Corton: Clos du Roi earned its name that way. It is part of history that almost throughout the entire reign of the Grand Monarque a Battle of the Wines raged. Some Burgundian in a medical treatise spoke slightingly of Champagne. The Faculty of Medicine at Rheims took up the challenge, and questioned the effects of Burgundy upon the health, whereas Champagne, Volnay or Pommard, for in as all knew, was good for everybody. And so it went on, doctor replying to doctor, until all the literary world, prose writers and poets, in French or in Latin, were writing for Burgundy or against it. One poet even, named Goffin, was rewarded for a Latin ode in favour of Champagne by a lavish gift of that wine from the burgesses of Rheims. Bordeaux seems to have been wholly outside this dispute: Court preferences were divided between the two eastern magnificences. It is a curious observation of those two learned men, MM. Rouff and Curnonsky, in the Burgundian volume of their France Gastronomique,' that the Côte d'Or, which divides the Rhone basin from that of the Seine, is also the "wine-shed" of France. East of that, the stronger heavier wines; west of it, the light vintages of Touraine and Anjou; and lastly, Bordeaux, which associates itself by preference with fowl, as does Burgundy with beef or game. I need hardly point out that the districts of Beaujolais and of Macon belong to the Burgundian wine-shed; they are attached to the valley of the Saône, between Chalon-surSaône and Lyons, and so, though not to be confused with it, they continue southwards the line of the Côte d'Or. Such well-known wines as Moulin-à-Vent and Mercurey belong to Beaujolais, and so are in a quite different category from stance. South of Lyons, after Saône and Rhone have joined, the wine-shed keeps its robust character, and you have the Côte Rôtie and Hermitage and Châteauneuf du Pape - fine creatures, but lacking the subtlety which the Côte d'Or can impart even to its most fullbodied growths. But all this geography omits one fact-Chablis counts among the Burgundies, and Chablis is on a tributary of the Seine. The wine is, however, quite a distinct species from anything on the Côte d'Or. Nevertheless that part of my education in the Côte d'Or which was conducted at table began with Chablis : a "Grand Chablis of 1915 which we drank at déjeuner. It was the custom of that household to drink always white wine at mid-day and red in the evening at each of the four stages in my instruction we began with an ordinaire-but a grand ordinaire-for table wine, and went on to what was older and finer, but of the same colour. And these wines were the accompaniment to a cuisine bourgeoise for which the lady of the house and her single bonne were, I suppose, jointly responsible. Nothing could be simpler, and nothing, anywhere, more perfect and the simplicity admitted of that touch of imagination which marks the French standard. At one of these meals the garden had furnished a dish of green peas, not easy to come by in mid and necessarily a great rarity on the Côte d'Or. This plat was served to us separate, of course, but immediately after the soup that was Madame's way of doing honour to it. Then came the one dish which preceded cheese and fruit. That was the setting which a connoisseur of Burgundy gave to a bottle of his best wine. September even in our climate, Naturally, the second evening set the coping-stone. It was a Chambertin of 1904, and I blushed when I learnt how few remained of this treasured store. Still, this was a Burgundian's way of paying compliment to the friend of friends he valued, and at least it was not unappreciated. I know now, what I had never known before, how good the best Burgundy can be. Perhaps that absolute perfection only comes when the wine has lain ever since it was bottled in the same cellar; when all the processes of fermenting and maturing, all the natural changes in its life, have gone completely undisturbed. At all events, it was a wonder that anything could be so delicate, so subtle, so smooth, and yet so strong. Its robe-to use the charming word which is technical in French-was gorgeous: maturity had just shaded off the darkness of the purple into some suggestion of a tawnier crimson; but the real impressiveness lay in the harmony of colour, perfume, and vitality. It was like seeing the best of Titian. Other things in art may for some personal reason haunt you and hold you more: but you know of assurance that there is nothing greater to be We drank on the first evening a Corton Clos du Roi of 1915, and I was told that this wine would develop more bouquet as it matured: it seemed hard to believe. Next day at lunch I made my first acquaintance with Montrachet, also of 1915, and about that my mind was clear. I have never tasted any white wine of France to come near it that is, as a wine to drink with food. Yquem and the other great Sauternes are in their own way delicious, but it is a different and a less serviceable way. (The great hocks may equal it.) Montrachet is a subdivision of Meursault, southernmost of the famous villages, and most beautiful, for it lies in a fold of the hills, and every house in it seems to be of the eighteenth century at latest, and every one of them is delightful. Strictly speaking, the band of favoured soil which runs for twenty miles north to south along the coteau stops here only a few threads of it extend two or three miles farther south and produce whatever vins fins Santenay can show. seen. A wine like that does not tempt any discriminating person to excess and my veneration for it forbade me to drink more than I could taste with the same keenness as when it was first offered. That, I trust, is some proof that the education was not wasted. It is odd that the richest and most potent of these wines should come from the northern end of this favoured belt. The Côte d'Or really breaks into two midway, and there is a gap south of Nuits St George's, where stone quarries take the place of vineyards. From that northward to the skirts of Dijon, is the Côte de Nuits; but south of the quarries comes the hill of Corton, on the edge of Beaune, and in great part belonging to to the Hospices. Southward past Beaune to Volnay and Pommard, the wines of what is called the Côte de Beaune are lighter, though not less exquisite than Chambertin, Vougeot, Romanée-Conti and Musigny-all belonging to the Côte de Nuits. On all this ground both the white and the black grape flourish, and according to my Belgian authority, before the French Revolution, Volnay was famous for its white wines and Meursault for its red: now it is the other way, though why this change has come about he does not attempt to explain. But there is a region in Burgundy which produces admirable wine, but white wine only. The district of Chablis is peculiar and apart. From Chablis to Chambertin, the nearest point on the Côte d'Or, is nearly a hundred kilometres as the crow flies: and, of course, to the Beaujolais and the Maconnais is twice as far. Moreover, as I have said already, Chablis is on a different river system : the Serein, which passes through it, flows into the Armançon, and that again into the Yonne, and so finally into the Seine. The raison d'être of this most valuable wine-for what else is so good as Chablis at the beginning of a meal?— appears to be geological. Whatever is really Chablis comes from one rounded depression in the high plateau, not more than eight miles long by five; and throughout this depression occurs a belt of the bituminous Kimmeridgian clay, not found elsewhere till it reappears across the Channel at Kimmeridge in Dorset. Wherever the pinot (or as they call it in Chablis, the Beaunais) will grow in this district, it produces real Chablis but on the levels by the river on which the little old town stands, this plant refuses to thrive it needs the slope. Real Chablis must be made from grapes produced by the pinot on soil overlying Kimmeridgian clay. There is not enough of this soil to produce one-quarter of the wine which is sold as Chablis; and yet a considerable part of the true soil is not now under vines, because the vigneron of Chablis has been driven from his hereditary occupation by causes which he is now endeavouring to fight. If he succeeds, there will be more real Chablis produced; and also there will be much less of the spurious article sold as Chablis at all events, in France. |