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Bourgogne Côte d’Or, vines of the rising sun!

03/04/2019

Through this appellation, wine industry professionals wanted to underline the expertise that is at work in some parts of the Bourgogne region with very distinctive characteristics. The INAO, the body which oversees French wine regulations, agreed with this view.

Bourgogne Côte d’Or owes its name not the eponymous département, but to the côte, or hillsides, where the vines are located (see box). The production area covers all the villages from the south of Dijon as far as Les Maranges.

But strictly speaking, this is not really a new AOC. Rather, it is included within the specifications covering the Bourgogne AOC, but benefits from an additional geographical denomination, just like Bourgogne Côte Chalonnaise or Bourgogne Côtes d’Auxerre. There are 14 Bourgogne wines with geographical denominations. These denominations mean a more restricted production area, whereas the Bourgogne AOC can be made from grapes grown anywhere across the region. This offers another opportunity to discover Bourgogne wines and the wide diversity of their terroirs.

Bourgogne Côte d’Or has stricter regulations for its production, which ensure higher quality:

• As for Village wines, the density of planting is set at 9,000 vines/hectare (compared to a minimum of 5,000 per hectare for Bourgogne wines)
• The maximum yields are 66 hl/ha for whites and 58 hl/ha for reds
• The minimum alcohol level is the same as for Village wines: 11% for whites and 10.5% for reds
• The vineyards are all located on the Côte, mainly on the foothills, bordering the Village plots. With this pedigree, the new kid on the block has a bright future ahead of it.

Did you know?

Two uses and two origins for a single name!

Winegrowers chose the name of the Bourgogne Côte d’Or appellation as a reference to the orientation of the winegrowing hillsides. The Côte d’Or in this case represents a contraction of “Côte d’Orient”, meaning oriented to the east. A symbol of the Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits, this favorable aspect goes a long way to explain the excellence of its wines, which benefit from the warming rays of the rising sun.

The Côte-d’Or département (with a hyphen), for its part, was named by the National Assembly in the 19th century for a much more bucolic reason. The name refers to the magnificent golden color that cloaks the vines just after the harvests.