Burgundy

I've been deliberately trying varietal table wines from the larger and more widely distributed California wineries. I've noticed the label "Burgundy" on a number of California wines, which is a bit disconcerting if you think about it. You would think that Burgundy on a label means "This wine was made from grapes grown in the Burgundy (Bourgogne) region of France." Well, yes, sometimes, it does mean that. French Red Burgundy is made from French Pinot Noir grapes; white Burgundy is made from French Chardonnay grapes. There's a complicated hierarchy of French Burgundy wines. The hierarchy begins with grand cru, the best wine from the best sites, then premier cru, which are still quality wines, but not at the high level of the grand cru, and then village, which are wines associated with a village in Burgundy where the grapes are grown. Mind, even a village label means it's perfectly reasonable to cellar them for three or four years. Village is also the largest category of French Burgundy, in terms of quantity of wine.

But in America, bless our little patriotic ethnocentric hearts, Burgundy is more often than not a label on wine from California; it is, in fact, typically, a label that is applied to a red wine blend, or, a "jug wine" that might, or might not, actually have any Pinot Noir in it, and that is emphatically not from the Bourgogne. The California wine that first caught my eye because of a Burgundy label on it was Gallo Hearty Burgundy; an old label from the days of "jug wines" in the seventies that seems to have been given new life. Carlo Rossi, who is still making "jug" table wines also offers a California derived Burgundy. The poor step child of E. J. Gallo, Livingston Cellars, makes a "Burgundy" as well; though exactly what that means is left up, completely, to the imbiber's imagination.