Monks, Revolution, and A Quick History of Burgundy
This issue was published on October 4, 2023.
Happy Wine Wednesday!
We’re here to level up your wine game and celebrate the women who work in wine, all while having a grape time.
Today we’re meeting the Catholic monks who built Burgundy’s wine history before meeting Madame Lalou Bize-Leroy, aka the “Queen of Burgundy” herself.
So pour yourself a glass of Chablis or Burgundian pinot noir and let’s get our wine nerd on!
A Quick History of Burgundy
The Roman Empire, Monks, and A Revolution
Look, I know. I could never cover all of Burgundy in this newsletter.
The small region, called Bourgognes in France, has some of the most sought-after and expensive wines in the world, arguably the world’s best pinot noirs and chardonnays, and is also home to Beaujolais (a wine region and name in its own right). Even though there are only about 66,000 acres of vines here (less than a quarter of Bordeaux), the region is also known for its unique winemaking methods. Some might say it’s one of the most complicated wine regions in the world!
There are entire books about Burgundy, so I’m not going to pretend like this will be a deep dive. Instead, I’m going to skim the surface of this fascinating sliver of northern France by just looking into its history today.
Ready?
The first documented vineyard goes all the way back to the first century in the village of Meursault, although with such a small population, the vineyard didn’t really expand. With the expansion of the Roman Empire came their love of wine, but Rome was more influential in southern France, so there still wasn’t much emphasis on winemaking in the region compared to their southern neighbors. Then, when the Roman Empire collapsed, the region was plundered repeatedly by barbarian tribes that passed through until eventually, the Germanic tribe known as the Burgondes settled in the region in 450. They called their settlement Burgundia.
In 534, Burgundia became absorbed by another Germanic entity, a Frankish kingdom established by Clovis, the king of Franks, who went on to unify the various barbaric Germanic tribes in the region. With the king’s coronation, the region that was once called Gaul became modern France (as in the king of Franks). Once Clovis converts to Christianity, thereby establishing France as a Christian nation, it becomes a nucleus for Catholicism which is important because…
We’re going to skip ahead to 909 when the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny, the most well-endowed order in Europe and the largest landowner in Burgundy (until the French Revolution), is founded near Mâcon. For context, the Benedictines controlled more than 1,500 monasteries at their peak and the Abbey of Cluny was the largest cathedral in Europe until it was surpassed in 1626 by St. Peter’s in Rome. Basically, Burgundy is owned by the Catholic church.
By the end of the eleventh century, a reform movement resulted in the formation of a second order, the Cistercians (I swear we’re getting to the wine soon). The Cistercian Abbey of Citeaux, founded in 1098, became a massive book creation workshop and library, boasting more than ten thousand volumes by the French Revolution with monks serving as copyists, illuminators, and book binders. These patient monks who were systematic in approach and committed to tough physical labor were the caretakers of this huge plot of land and, most importantly, literate. This made them uniquely qualified to care for and categorize the various vineyards and soils of Burgundy.
They went from vineyard to vineyard, plot to plot, clearing and cultivating vines, studying and comparing soils, and recording their meticulous impressions for centuries. These monks were not only the ones to uncover some of the greatest vineyards in Burgundy, but the first to establish terroir as a key part of viticulture!
Many, many years before the French appellation system was established in the 20th century, these Benedictine and Cisterian monks started to define and differentiate the region. For example, they noticed that the lower parts of slopes, which had the heaviest soils and suffered the most when it rained, had lower quality wines. They categorized these as cuvées de moines, or “wines for the monks.” The tops of slopes had the least rain but uncontrolled sunlight, resulting in what they called cuvées des cardinals, or “wines for the cardinals.” Good, but not great. The cuvées des papes, or “wines for the popes,” came from the middle of the slope, which had the best sun and the best runoffs of rain. I hope that they kept some of that middle slope wine for themselves…
These monks shared their power with some very wealthy (and infamous) dukes who, in exchange for religious approbation, would give even more land to the monks – meaning more vineyards and more wine.The dukes shared and promoted these Burgundian wines with popes, French kings, and other nobility. This in turn resulted in the more religious of the nobles donating even more land to the church.
However, because Burgundy is deep in France with no shared borders or waterways, there wasn’t any way for the monks or dukes to transport the Burgundian wines very far. This meant that while barrels of Bordeaux were being shipped out to England from the thirteenth century, it wasn’t until the fourteenth century when the papal court and residence moved from Rome to Aivgnon in southern France that Burgundy finally got its chance to shine outside of the region.
The newly arrived pope and entourage were, of course, very excited to try the wines that were so immaculately cared for by the monks, which led to soaring demand. As towns grew and roads got (a little bit) better, Burgundy wine traveled further and so did its fame.
The massive wealth and land ownership of the church and the dukes ends with the French Revolution which began in 1789. While almost all of the vineyards were owned by the Roman Catholic Church, the new state redistributed the wealth by confiscating the land, splitting up vineyards, and redistributing to local farmers who worked the lands via auctions. These smaller plots were then divided further as a result of the Napoleonic Code of 1804, which stated that all children must inherit land equally upon the death of a parent instead of by birth order. Due to this continuous fragmentation, it’s not unusual for a Burgundian today to only own just a few rows of vines.
This is another factor that makes Burgundy wines so interesting: having small plots of vineyards owned by different winemakers right next to each other!
One final fun history fact:
A small, historic village in the Mâconnais region of Burgundy is called Chardonnay, and many believe that is the birthplace of the varietal.
I don’t know about you, but this is all making me want to eat some local cheese with homemade bread with a glass of pinot noir while wandering around medieval castles...
Lalou Bize-Leroy
The Queen of Burgund
Today, we’re staying in Burgundy to learn about the Queen of Burgundy who not only helped to make Domaine de la Romanée-Conti what it is today, but also ushered in an era of biodynamic farming and raised the quality of wines in Burgundy.
Marcelle, known as Lalou, was born in 1932 into a wine family on the Côte de Nuits in Burgundy. Her paternal great grandfather François Leroy owned vineyards and founded his own trading house, Maison Leroy, in 1868. The business grew and thrived under his son Joseph’s watch as they diversified and won medals throughout Europe for their wines and spirits. Business was booming.
Later, François’ older grandson Marcel would devote himself to the family’s dairy farm at d’Auvenay, so the younger Henri took over the wine and spirits business. He established a subsidiary to produce cognac and build distilleries and eventually, the spirits and fortified wines business became the most lucrative parts of Maison Leroy. In 1942, Henri made another key investment by buying a 50% share of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (often called DRC and known today as the producer of some of the world’s most expensive wines). At the time, the domaine was in dire need of investments.
Henri shared his knowledge and love of wines with his younger daughter Lalou. In fact, the story goes that he touched her lips with a drop of 1929 Musigny when she was born, and she would finish the little splashes of wine left in guests’ glasses after her family entertained. She took some days off of school every year to participate in harvest, would sneak into cellars to watch the workers, and would often accompany Henri on his increasing visits to DRC.
By 1955, Henri was spending more and more of his time at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and the more lucrative aspects of the family business, like the brandy distillery. In need of someone to put more attention to purchasing fine wines for the family négociant (wine merchant) business, he put the 23 year old Lalou in charge. If the men she worked with were unhappy with dealing with a young woman, she didn’t care.
Lalou Bize-Leroy, founder of Domaine Leroy and Domaine d'Auvenay.
Image courtesy of Domaine Leroy.
At that time, most producers didn’t estate bottle their wine, so Lalou would typically purchase wines from producers by tasting samples in barrels before bringing them back to the family firm’s cellars to age and bottle. By the 80’s, more and more estates started bottling their own wines, meaning less wine for other wine merchants to purchase. In addition, many producers began using a lot of agrochemicals in the mid-60s – something Lalou wasn’t a fan of. She blamed the high yields from vineyards and the use of chemicals for the decreasing quality of wine and refused to compromise on her standards for Maison Leroy.
The solution to this problem would be to purchase her own domaine, but first…
In 1964, Maison Leroy acquired the worldwide distribution rights to DRC’s wines (excluding only the UK and the U.S.), so it was only natural that their partnership continued after Henri stepped down. Lalou took the reins of Maison Leroy in 1974 and became the co-director of DRC in 1974, along with her co-director Aubert de Villaine who replaced his father. Lalou helped to make DRC’s bottles some of the most sought after wines in the world not only with marketing but by pushing for organic viticulture and the continuous improvement of wine quality.As an intelligent and outspoken woman who stuck to her principles, I’m assuming many (men) in the wine industry found her polarizing…
By 1992, she left DRC over conflicts. Her nephew, Charles Roch, would replace her (until he died in a car accident a few months later and would be replaced by his brother, Henry-Frédéric. Lalou’s daughter, Perrine Fenal, succeeded Henry in 2019 so it continues to remain in the family.)
By that time, she had purchased a couple of domains along with other vineyards for a total of 55 acres of vines for her own Domaine Leroy. She also established Domaine d’Auvenay, an independent estate in her own right that originally produced only white wines. Inspired by an article she read in a Swiss newspaper, she immediately adopted biodynamic farming. She stopped using chemical fertilizers and anything that could kill soil or plant life, implemented natural yeasts in her fermentation process, followed the lunar calendar, and hired a new winemaker.
Unfortunately, mildew spread throughout Burgundy in the summer of 1993. Still refusing to use any chemicals or fungicides, she lost most of her crop – along with her vineyard manager and winemaker. Journalists surveyed the damage in her vineyards while others in the industry criticized her. Still, she remained committed to biodynamic farming.
When she finally released the small amount of 1993 vintage she had a couple years later, people raved. Today, if you do a quick search of Domaine Leroy, you’ll see that critics continue to love and praise her wines – which is why her wines start at about $100 and go for much, much more than that…
If any of you decide to drop a thousand dollars on a bottle of her wine, please invite me over!
Get a wine-related movie or book pairing for your weekend.
Today’s pairing is this Forbes profile on Madame Lalou Bize-Leroy
While not a recent piece (she is 91 years old after all), writer Jeannie Cho Lee provides a more personal look at the Queen of Burgundy as she tastes wine and walks through the vineyards with her.
That’s all for today!
Don’t forget to share this with your fellow wine nerds and reply with any suggestions for wine topics, vinotainment, or women in wine.
Have a wine-derful week and see you next Wednesday!
Cheers,
Megumi