Burgundy's reds provide an education in life's finer things

Any holiday with my friends Lisa and Hillary is always serious about wine. They both have distinguished palates, read seriously on the subject and invest in fine bottles for their cellars. (I'm less dedicated, but always very appreciative.) As a trio we've done local wine exploration in Italy, Spain and Tunisia, while working our way through a fine array of wine lists, bars, tastings and fairs in other locations.

Burgundy is without doubt the most serious wine region the trio has tackled together, and if you're going to be serious here, you have to start with the reds. The local tourist board suggests six different wine routes, each of which merit a day or more. With limited time we headed right to the centre of the district, concentrating on the Cote de Nuits and the Cote de Beaune. The first stretches North from Beaune to Dijon, the second South. (With really limited time you could skip the vineyards and concentrate on Beaune which, as the centre of the district, has a large number of wine shops and tasting experiences.)

The names on the map are the same ones you've seen on posh wine lists: Gevrey-Chambertin, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Pommard. The wine route is actually a progression of picturesque small villages, each rarely more than two miles from the next, separated by the exquisitely maintained patchwork of vines. Most of the "domaines" (the houses which produce and sell the wine) are in the villages and actually share the fields around them. There aren't vineyards as in, say, California, where one owner controls a wide swathe of fields. Here, multiple owners tend to control a few rows each in a patchwork of fields.

This stems out of the French passion for "terroir"; the idea that the earth itself infuses the wine and food produced on it with distinct flavours, and that those flavours can change yard by yard depending on elevation, the minerals in the soil, which direction a slope faces, etc. Thus one of the first lessons you learn in Burgundy is that you're not just buying the village, you're buying the field. And each field has specific designations. A "grand cru", France's ultimate designation for wine, and the penultimate "premier cru", are not awarded by some judge based on the taste of that year's wine. They are solely dependent upon the field from which those grapes were harvested. Anything that comes from a grand cru field gets a grand cru designation and, of course, a grand cru price tag. (To me, this seems to put surprisingly little emphasis on the talent of the winemaker, but I suppose most of these vineyards have been in family hands for so long there's an assumption of quality.)

Thus the essential accoutrement for any tasting in Burgundy is an agricultural map of the village fields. Which most domaines have sitting atop their tasting tables as a matter of course. It is only by understanding where the grapes come from that you can properly appreciate the nuances upon which French wine is marketed. In general, the everyday wines are grown on the valley floor in fields close to the villages, while the premier and grand crus tend to be on the hillsides. When offered a series of wines to taste here, it is indeed possible for even only moderately sensitive taste buds to pick up the differences. In some cases the differences are extreme. A few thousand yards and a few extra degrees of elevation can make a massive impact and, in most cases, you could instantly taste the quality difference in the premier crus.

We didn't taste any grand crus. In fact, one of the difficulties of a wine tasting holiday in such a famous region is that the more famous the wine, the less likely you are to get a sip. A domaine may only make 3000 bottles a year of one type of wine; the only tastings they offer are to wine writers and industrial buyers. The rest of us have to buy on reviews and faith. Another challenge of this region is that all the better stuff you're tasting isn't meant to be drunk now. "You must keep this for at least five, but preferably 10 years" was a refrain we heard a lot. I will admit, I don't have the taste buds to imagine how this highly tannic, too acidic wine will mellow in a decade, nor do I have the cellar or the patience to let these juveniles mature. My mouth, and my budget, were more interested in things to drink now.

The inability to taste was particularly true in Gevrey-Chambertin, a village of just a few streets that encompasses nine grand crus and 26 premier crus. Napoleon insisted on travelling with the stuff and it's been getting celebrity endorsements ever since. Though tasting wasn't on offer, we did get a fascinating tour at Domaine Drouhin-LaRoze (notably after Hillary and Lisa both purchased bottles for their cellar). The chatelaine of the place, who married in to the fifth generation of winemakers and has given birth to the sixth, showed us around the venerable cellars filled with barrels of French oak and bottles acquiring their requisite age. Above ground stood a complex of gracious family homes and well maintained agricultural buildings, testament that this corner of the world has been prosperous for a long, comfortable time.

A stone's throw away, in a small village square, stood a tiny wine shop that carried a variety of the village's produce. Again, no tastings; it's all about recommendation and trust. I was interested to see what moderately priced wines from this exclusive village tasted like, so followed the shopkeeper's advice and purchased three bottles of plain old Gevrey-Chambertin village Burgundy from winemaker Sylvie Esmonin for 12 euro a bottle. We did our own tasting that night and I found my bargain buy delicious.

Just south of Gevrey is Vougeot, a particularly picturesque village with a single long street bisected by a stream flowing toward a mill with working water wheel, now turned in to a restaurant and hotel. Domaine Bertagne earned our affections here, not only for being open and generous with tastings (we'd had two earlier abortive attempts in the village) but for actually making wine in the courtyard while we were there. I had anticipated seeing more production, and while the yeasty smell of newly-fermenting juice was heavy in the air, this was the only time we saw the winemakers at work.

Another few miles south brings you to Nuits-Saint-Georges, the anchor of this little area. It's particularly famous for its hospital which, like the institution in Beaune, has a long financial legacy based on wine and has a particularly famous wine auction every year. We had a good stroll around town looking for several producers tipped by the New York Times, but our timing was particularly bad. It was 12:30 and everyone save one wine shop was shut up tight. We took the proprietor's advice and, after tasting a glass of the local nectar he had on offer, headed off for lunch. Even after meal time, most of the wine producers' doors stayed closed. They were all clearly too busy making their wine to waste precious time with tourists. Fortunately Nuits is blessed with some charming shops, so we were happily diverted before heading elsewhere.

A different day found us further south in the Cote de Beaune. This is a more mixed area, known for both its whites and reds. The most famous of the latter here is Pommard. Again, few "ouvert" signs were out and tasting opportunities were few. Except that the very clever vintners of Pommard have joined together to communally fund a wine shop on the main square run by a phenomenally friendly and informed young woman who, once she saw the level of our interest, spent at least an hour with us allowing us to taste a variety and taking us through details of each. Unsurprisingly, this made Pommard not only my favourite red wine village but the place where I made my biggest purchase, investing in a 2001 wine redolent with red fruits and just starting to get those earthy tones that the really mature wines have, that will take pride of place at Christmas dinner.

A few minutes up the road was Volnay, where we had the tiny local grower experience I'd been expecting more of. A sign and a barrel topped with a range of bottles welcomed us into Domaine Christophe Vaudoisey's courtyard, then a single shop, office and packing room where the little old man (M. Vaudoisey, I presume) grabbed a key and brought us downstairs into the cellar. In which he allowed us to taste the full range of his labour. It was here that I bought my experiments in cellaring. Two bottles will be living in our host's medieval vaults for seven to 10 years, at which point I should have something extraordinary.

While our adventures in classic reds were educational and delicious, they may have exposed me as a wine cretin. The mostly Pinot Noir based wines of this region are legendary for being complex, subtle and delicate. While exquisite with food, to my palate they don't fare well when drunk alone. I'm afraid that unless I'm matching wine to a specific dish, I still prefer the big, bold, fruity kick of a cabernet or a merlot. It may be a horrifying preference to a wine expert, but at least now it's a more informed one.