The Burgundy Black Book

A patchwork of towns and villages with a complex appellation system, Burgundy can feel like a hard nut to crack. But if you’re not all about chasing grand crus, it’s such a down-to-earth and unstuffy region, where villages and vineyards sit closely together and generations of families have worked the same parcels of land for decades. With Dijon as the gateway and Beaune as the heart, there’s plenty to keep you in town amid postcard-pretty streets of half-timbered houses and ancient masonry: candlelit restaurants where you just might run into a vigneron, cozy wine bars and back rooms where magnums are poured, a fantastic wine bookshop, and the last family-run mustard mill. But you’ll also want to get out to the smaller wine villages—to bike through the vineyards, hunt for truffles, lunch beside fields ploughed by horses and, of course, taste wine. From Chablis and the Côte de Nuits to the Côte Chalonnaise and Hautes-Côtes (and beyond), how do you get into a grand domaine, find the smaller producers you can actually book in a region that runs on relationships, or know who to hire if you want a pro to help? We turned to four deeply knowledgeable Burgundy insiders to help us figure it out, and were blown away by their amazing intel. Over to them!

VICTORIA JAMES – Sommelier at large, Partner at Gracious Hospitality Management, and author of the Wine, Restaurants, People Substack 

We first became aware of Victoria James through her amazing work at COTE and COQODAQ, where she built their wine programs and remains a founding partner of Gracious Hospitality Management. But we fell for her through her Substack, where she writes about wine, restaurants, and travel with the same knowledge, confidence, and lack of pretension that made her the youngest sommelier in the U.S. at 21. She’s the author of the memoir Wine Girl and co-founder of Wine Empowered, which provides tuition-free wine education to women and people of color in hospitality. These days she’s stepped back from the day-to-day at Gracious to focus on some of her own projects, though of course remains completely obsessed with wine. When asked where her wine allegiances lie, she was unequivocal: “Old World for me, all day. Especially white Burgundy.” Naturally, we wanted her Burgundy List, which is beyond!

STAY

Clos Sainte Marguerite (formerly Chez les Fatien), Beaune – Five suites inside a négociant family’s private hôtel particulier by Raymond and Martine. Stone floors, Farrow & Ball paint. I personally loved the antique high chair as well in the breakfast room for my daughter, when she was a baby. The whole place is like a cozy museum of personally collected artifacts.

Hôtel Le Cep, Beaune – The grande dame, all Renaissance courtyards and delightful antique maximalism. This would be the place I’d stay pretty much every time I went on a Kermit Lynch importing trip. The rooms off the older courtyards are gorgeous, and pretty much all of the rooms are big enough to fit a Manhattan studio with lots of ornate old world charm.