Burgundy

The Burgundy vineyards

The 30,000 ha Burgundian vineyard extends as follows: 6,000 ha in the Yonne (for the Chablis wines), 8,000 in the Maconnais, 6,000 in the Cote Chalonnaise and 10,000 in the Cote d'Or (including the very famous Cote de Nuits, and Cote de Beaune). The Burgundy vineyard is fragmented as a mosaic made up of thousands of parcels (here called climats), often very small (as for instance La Romanee being the smallest designation in the world with 0.8 hectares), due to geological origin and a very diverse composition of soils often within the same locality. They are essentially sedimentary soils made up of clay, marl, limestone, deposited 150 million years ago in the Jurassic period on an even older substrate.