A tour around Burgundy's Cote d’Or

No-one knows for certain how Burgundy’s Cote d’Or got its name. Some say it’s because the vineyards look golden in autumn. Others claim it derives from Cote d’Orient because the vineyards face east. More sardonic modern observers see it as fitting tribute to the wealth with which the wine trade has gilded the region.

What there’s no doubt about is that wine — in particular that produced from the pinot noir grape — infuses every aspect of the district, from its square-towered chateaux to its musty caves. And there’s no better way to immerse yourself in its glories and idiosyncracies than to get out and walk.

Last spring, I joined a guided, five-day walking tour through the region, which seemed at times like a wander through an upmarket wine list. Our group of 14, started at Gevrey-Chambertin and passed through a succession of villages redolent of illustrious (and astronomically expensive) vintages — Vosne-Romanée, Vougeot, Nuits-Saint-Georges, Volnay, Pommard. En route, in cellars, vineyards, tasting rooms, and manoirs, we were given a top-to-bottom initiation into the art of vine-growing and wine-drinking — starting with bud burst in the hills above Gevrey and finishing with a demonstration of barrel-making near Puligny-Montrachet. It was a mouthwatering itinerary.

It was also a trip firmly rooted in a sense of place. Terroir is a concept adhered to with a near-religious fervour here. It holds that a wine’s character is almost wholly dependent on microclimate, soil, sub-soil and other local conditions. Fissures in rock that allow vine roots access to minerals are referred to reverently (“Minerality is the holy grail of wine making”).

Almost as much energy is devoted to personifying the end product. The red liquids we swirled and sniffed and savoured ranged from “virile” and “firm-shouldered” to “voluptuously feminine”".

The usual venues for information of this kind were the wine cellars that we visited two or three times a day: dank, bottle-lined vaults, smelling of earth, brick and vinegary unfermented juice. We had our eyes opened to colour spectrums and their significance (from the bluish crimson of young red wine, for instance, through ruby and garnet tints to brown and, finally, pale tawny). Our noses were alerted to primary, secondary and tertiary aromas; our palates instructively doused with fruit and tannins, hints of minerals, spices, leather, mushrooms and loam. Each evening, over meals highlighting regional specialities — ham in aspic flecked with parsley, beef simmered in burgundy for the best part of a day — expertly selected vintages offered further titillation for the taste buds.

This was a holiday high on gourmet hedonism but it catered to cultural appetites as well. Early in the tour, we walked through vineyards to the Chateau du Clos de Vougeot, situated among the remains of a Cistercian abbey whose old barns house extraordinary 13th-century wine presses: enormous contraptions with giant wooden screw systems and massive beams that look as though they could crush a tank.

It was fascinating to see one of the places where Burgundy’s wine industry got under way. Present-day extravagances were in evidence as well. For the Clos is headquarters to the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, a world-wide nexus of well-heeled topers who regularly get together for Burgundian blowouts awash with costly vintages. Emblazoned on a stained-glass window in their banqueting quarters, their motto is “Jamais en vain. Toujours en vin.”

Their greatest celebration is in January, marking the feast day of Saint Vincent, who is the patron saint of wine makers. Why exactly, no one knows. For some, the first three letters of his name fit him perfectly for the role. Others think it’s because he was martyred by being — grape-like — trampled to a pulp. Some maintain that his donkey, which is rumoured to have nibbled a vine shoot in Burgundy, introduced pruning to the region and ensured the fruitful blossoming of its wine trade.

Pictures of Saint Vincent crop up frequently in the Cote d’Or: on the walls of wineries, taped above barrels stacked in cellars, poking out from price lists on desks in sales outlets. To judge from the pervading prosperity, he’s a saint worth cultivating. Burgundy’s picture-postcard villages look spruce with affluence. Beaune, the capital of the Cote d’Or, where we spent a couple of days, is rich in high-end restaurants, pricey wine shops and chocolatiers, classy fromageries and delicatessens bristling with charcuterie.

It also manages to be a beautifully evocative place. Within its well-kept city walls — perfect for panoramic evening strolls — is a maze of 17th- and 18th-century houses, intercut with medieval alleys. At the centre of it all is the unmissable Hotel-Dieu. Go through its turnstile and you find yourself in a 15th-century courtyard surrounded by pillared galleries. Sloping down from high above its pinnacled dormer windows is a cliff-like roof gleaming, as if varnished, with the glazed coloured tiles arranged in geometric patterns of dusky yellow, cobalt blue, sage green and russet.

For 500 years the Hotel-Dieu was a hospital, and the grand hall retains its lines of red-curtained four-poster beds under a high-arching timber ceiling. There’s also an art gallery with a panoramic Last Judgment by Rogier van der Weyden. This is a painting on a huge scale, but the museum authorities are determined that its finer points won’t elude your notice. Steered backwards and forwards, up and down, by an attendant with a remote control, a giant mobile magnifying glass ensures that you don’t miss a detail of the resurrected bodies sprouting like mushrooms from the earth, virtuous nudes beamingly entering the golden gate and flambéd sinners toppling into the bottomless pit.

Beaune was a high spot of the holiday. Prominent among many others was the fact that a walking holiday is also a talking holiday. Like sharing a bottle of wine, rambling across the countryside is a sure-fire dissolver of formality and reserve, making this the friendliest of holiday experiences. It’s one that stays with you too, in the bottles you take home at the end of the trip. A holiday in the Cote d’Or doesn’t only brim with instant satisfactions — it has a pleasingly long finish.