483: Listen to Françoise Vannier and Never Look At Burgundy the Same Way Again

[00:00:00] I'm Levi Dalton and this is Ill Drink to That, where we get behind the scenes of the wine business. When it comes to Burgundy Cruz, something that you will hear Vignerons say is that one area

[00:00:30] of Vaux-Nez differs from another area of Vaux-Nez. Or sometimes they say this about Vaune or Chambord or Maurice-Antony. It is said about a lot of different particular villages. There is the idea that the character of the Cruz in one part of a particular village is different

[00:00:50] from those found in other parts of that same village. This is one reason why you hear Vigneron talking about blending together the wine of several different Cruz situated within a single village to achieve a true sense of village character in the wine from that village.

[00:01:08] Benjamin Leroux mentions doing this for his village wine in his interview for instance. But actually, when you think about it, it can seem a bit odd that two Cruz from the same village would give a very different character from one another and that a third Cruz in

[00:01:24] that same village might be entirely different from the first two. It can seem odd because the village names are what are used to indicate the areas on many Burgundy maps and many Burgundy labels. And we think of Vaux-Nez as a unit containing Cruz that have a character that

[00:01:42] is Vaux-Nez like. But the question is, should we perceive it that way? Should the village names be the distinguishing feature in how we understand Burgundy? Françoise Vagner, a geologist who has been studying the Cruz of Burgundy for two decades

[00:01:59] now, has some answers to these questions and she is the guest on today's program. To better follow along with what Françoise says, a map of Burgundy, a standard village-centered map

[00:02:10] of Burgundy, may be a helpful thing to have in front of you. And before we get to her interview, we should recall how the geology of France came to be and how the Côte d'Or

[00:02:21] as we know it was formed. Geologist Brenna Quigley explained that process in episode 463 of I'll Drink to That. So the history of the geology of France starts over 300 million years ago. Most people know

[00:02:40] that Pangea was a supercontinent that existed in the past. But what a lot of people don't know is that there are actually several different supercontinents in the history of the Earth. So Pangea was just the most recent. And that makes sense if you think about, you know, continents

[00:02:56] are basically moving around a sphere. So if they continue moving for billions of years, they're going to crash into each other and then eventually they're going to start moving apart and then they'll crash into each other again. So basically, the oldest rocks in France,

[00:03:12] the Massif Central and the Massif Amorican, are ancient, ancient mountain ranges that were formed by the assembly of Pangea. So before Pangea existed as a supercontinent, it was separate continents that all kind of came together during these relatively dramatic

[00:03:30] continental collisions and formed these really ancient mountain ranges. Sometime after 300 million years ago, Pangea started to break apart. And so now we're getting into the formation of the Paris Basin. So the Paris Basin is when we talk about Champagne, Chablis,

[00:03:48] Sancerre are all a part of the Paris Basin. They formed during the Jurassic period, so around 200 million years ago. And it's not a coincidence that, you know, whenever you see recreations, drawings of dinosaur times, that it always looked really kind of hot and muggy

[00:04:08] and tropical. And that's because during this time, the temperature of the earth was actually higher. It was a really warm time in Earth's history. And there were no glaciers at the poles,

[00:04:20] so sea level was really high. So if you imagine Pangea started breaking apart and all of that land that just newly separated got flooded with water. And it was in these massive amounts of

[00:04:35] really shallow warm waters that we started getting the formation of limestone. And this is why the Jurassic period in time is usually associated with limestone, is because a huge amount of the Earth's continents were actually flooded with water as they started moving into their

[00:04:51] present-day positions. And so throughout time, you were getting layers and layers and layers of limestones building up on top of each other as sea level would rise and fall. So that kind of forms

[00:05:05] the Paris Basin. So you get different layers of limestones that are exposed at the surface today. And then the last thing that happened was the Alpine, we call it the Alpine Orogeny, or the building of the Alps. And that happened when as the continents have separated apart,

[00:05:22] and now in certain places they're crashing into each other again. So as Africa crashes into Europe, we start building the Alpine Mountains. And this basically caused a reverberation of different tectonic events to happen throughout France. So a lot of basically faulting and folding

[00:05:40] and redistributing of things. And that's really where you get the complexity of Burgundy geology, is essentially Paris Basin sediments that have then been kind of broken up and redistributed and reorganized. And if I were to think about champagne, what should I be thinking about?

[00:05:59] Champagne is more chalk. Chalk is just a deeper water equivalent of limestone, so it's essentially made up of the skeletons, the calcium carbonate skeletons of little planktons that live in the water column. And then as they die, they kind of rain down and

[00:06:15] form a layer of very, usually very soft, white, porous limestone rock. And so as you move from Chablis to the Cote d'Or, what changes? As you move from Chablis to the Cote d'Or, you're really getting a much bigger influence

[00:06:32] of that alpine effect. So you see a lot more faulting and a lot of the rocks just get kind of jumbled up. They get repeated because they've been kind of folded and faulted along the slope, and essentially very, very complex. Chablis is this really kind of beautiful, simple,

[00:06:51] layer cake geology. The Cote d'Or is kind of like you take the hat, you add a whole bunch of other different rocks, and you kind of throw it in a blender. And so what are some of the key factors in that for the Cote d'Or?

[00:07:02] So let's start with a regular kind of layer cake of geologic layers that are changing slightly from one to the next. So one factor that makes Cote d'Or more complicated is that there are more layers. There are more different types of things that have very small differences,

[00:07:20] one to the next, to very big differences. They're really all still limestones, but they vary in their composition, they vary in their hardness, they vary in their iron content, things like that. And then on top of it, all of those different layers have been broken up and

[00:07:36] redistributed all over the slope. So the rock type changes in very short distances from one to the next. So it's harder to link a lot of things together because the rock type is changing.

[00:07:47] There are also then the combs or the small alluvial valleys that break up the slope, and they give a huge distribution of different slope aspects and different steepnesses of the slope. So instead of looking at kind of like one simple slope like you do in

[00:08:03] Chablis, and like sometimes you think of with the Cote d'Or, there's actually a lot of different pieces to it. And then with all of those combs, like I mentioned before, that are coming west

[00:08:14] to east, kind of cutting up the slope, they're also bringing a lot of other alluvial material onto the slope, basically in between the slope. So an example of a comb would be like the Combe d'Arvo, which divides Chamboul from

[00:08:28] Flahy-Eschizel. And then the Combe du Rizard, which is by Gervais. There's these breaks in the slope. And often I think about them as bringing air through, but of course you being a geologist think about them as bringing soil through.

[00:08:43] Yeah, sure. And I mean, it's a combination of all those factors that's significant. It's bringing cold air, it's bringing different types of rocks, it's breaking up the slope, it's adding diversity to the aspects of the slope.

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[00:10:33] Francoise Vannier, who is a geologist and also a certified engineer on the show today. Hello, how are you? Fine, thank you. It's nice to make your acquaintance. It's nice for me too. So you

[00:10:45] grew up in the 1960s, actually in Burgundy. Yes, I was born in Burgundy and I spent all my youth there. And your grandparents on your mother's side, they were very into nature. Yeah, they were

[00:10:58] very important for me because as I was a child, I did not get a lot to school. And at that time, my grandparents took care of me. And each day, every day we went outside for a walk to visit

[00:11:14] the whole Burgundy. And I spent a lot of time in the countryside trying to find new species of mushroom or fungus or anything else. And it was really a kind of exciting game for me to be with

[00:11:30] them and to learn something new each day and to be able to come back at home and say to my parents, wow, do you know what we did today? And really, it was a very crucial part of my life. And I think

[00:11:45] for sure, it's not probably, it's for sure, if I became what I am nowadays, what I am today, it's due to my grandparents because they gave me the love of the nature, the love of the

[00:12:00] biology and geology, for sure. At the age of 18, you left to the University of Dijon, and eventually you studied sedimentary geology. Yeah, I was keen on geology quite young because I heard about geology when I was a child. And the first time I really remember where it was

[00:12:21] and when it was, the first time I said to my mom, oh, I want to become a geologist. Later on, I was eight years old. And I imagine at that time that being a geologist meant to be able to take

[00:12:36] the plane, which was something just incredible for me at that age when I was eight, and to cross the oceans to be able to look for some jewels because I was a child and really not aware

[00:12:51] of what really geology was at that time. So I left to go to Dijon, to the university to study geology. And Dijon was specialized in sedimentary geology, and that was quite something

[00:13:05] interesting for me. So I decided to stay in Dijon. And sedimentary geology is rocks that have been moved somehow, maybe through wind or water, right? Yeah, exactly. Sedimentary rocks are formed at the surface of the earth and they result from the sedimentation of former rocks that have been

[00:13:28] decomposed and transported either by water, by wind, by ice and so on, but transported sediments that accumulated most of the time. Limestone are sedimentary rocks. So part of my present-day job encompasses some things that I studied some decades ago. But when I was a student, I did not

[00:13:48] imagine that I could work for the wine growers once. It was something I didn't envisage at all. Because you're not really from a wine family either. You're from the Burgundy area, but you

[00:13:58] didn't make wine. Yeah, exactly. I was born in Burgundy, but nobody in my family was producing wine. My parents drank some wines during the meals and for specific fests, but it was not at all

[00:14:13] something I was familiar with. And so you thought about getting your PhD, but through a friend, you came to the conclusion it might be more interesting to get an engineering degree based

[00:14:24] around the petroleum industry. Yeah, I was planned to continue in Dijon and to study three, four years more for a PhD. And at that time, I met one woman working for the oil industry and she said to me,

[00:14:41] but you shouldn't have to study three years more at the university for a PhD. You have to try to work for the oil industry. And as I am not very good regarding mathematics and physics,

[00:14:55] it's better for me and easier for me to observe and to describe phenomenons. I said, no, but I can become an engineer. It's not at all something I can envisage. No, it's not possible. And she said,

[00:15:06] you should try. So I tried and I succeeded. So during two years, I've been a student in the French Institute of Petroleum and I studied oil exploration. At the end of the two years,

[00:15:21] I was employed by one of the two French oil companies named El Facetin at that time. And the deal with geology and the petroleum industry is that often they're pretty closely linked. The petroleum industry is a big sponsor of geologists. For sure it is and probably it's

[00:15:40] more enhanced in the United States, but in France and especially in my university at that time, very few students had the opportunity to work for the oil industry. And I was a kind of

[00:15:53] strange woman leaving the university and PhD and a great career as a teacher or a researcher to go to the oil industry. And I remember when I was a student, my friends saying, oh, but why

[00:16:06] are you trying to integrate the French Institute of Petroleum? You should focus on your master degree and work properly for it in order to get a PhD. So I think they thought I was crazy at that

[00:16:21] time. But I was curious to know if I was able, if I would be able to work. I was a woman. It was harder for the women than for the men. So I said, okay, it's a kind of challenge for me. I have

[00:16:34] to test and to see if I am able to. And I succeeded. So you worked for Elf, which was eventually purchased by Total. And you did a number of things for them in different places. You worked in the

[00:16:46] south of France for a bit, you were in Paris for a bit. And at one point your portfolio included thinking about petroleum reserves in Iran, Iraq and Syria, right? I went to Paris. And in Paris,

[00:17:00] I was working for the New Ventures areas. And at that time, I worked for Iraq, for Iran, for Syria, a lot of countries were known for their political troubles nowadays. And that wasn't so appealing

[00:17:14] to you. And so when your husband ended up moving back to the Burgundy area for his job, you came with him. My husband, who was teaching geology, he had the opportunity to leave the University of

[00:17:28] Amiens, located 150 kilometers northwest of Paris, and to go back to Dijon. And it was a crucial point for me. Shall I go to Rwanda with my three children and leave my husband in Dijon? Or shall I

[00:17:45] leave my job and go with my family in Dijon? So it was a quite a hard period for me because for the first time of my life, I had to choose and to think of what I prefer to do in my life. And I think that

[00:17:59] during six months, it was not something obvious for me. And probably I've been able to be angry and not maybe easy to live. But I decided to leave the oil industry and to follow my family in Burgundy.

[00:18:16] And that's why I arrived here in Burgundy in June 2000 with my children under my arms and my luggage and my husband at that time. What you discovered over time is that, you know, this was a region that's known for very subtle distinctions of crews in terms of wine,

[00:18:36] but it seems that the specifics of the geology were less well understood by the people making the wines. And also there weren't a lot of resources about having mapped these actual vineyards, even though it's thought of as well delineated in a geology sense, it didn't seem to be.

[00:18:54] Yeah, I was really puzzled when I arrived in Burgundy in the 2000s. I did not really know what I would be able to do there. And very rapidly, I realized that I was not able to remain

[00:19:08] at home all day long waiting for my husband. So I had a look in order to see what I would be able to do. And at that time, I realized that the wine grower did not know a lot regarding their soils,

[00:19:24] their subsoils, and few people were working for them. And I was amazed, puzzled because I realized that those guys were not really honest. They were taking a lot of money and saying some

[00:19:42] lies and some wrong things to their clients. And I said, no, it's not possible. I can't let them being abused by people who are not honest. And that's why I started to work for the wine growers.

[00:19:55] But I was wondering because my former teachers at the university, I respected them and I was convinced that they worked for the wine growers. And I was convinced that they did a good job.

[00:20:10] So I said, okay, they did some good job, but people nowadays is saying wrong things. So shall I have a place, a tiny place to work for the wine growers? And very rapidly, I realized that

[00:20:25] things had been down, but at a scale that was inappropriate to the scale of the Lyodi, of the climat in Burgundy. And so many things could be down in order to get more accurate knowledge

[00:20:41] regarding terroirs. I said, okay, I've got a new approach for the wine growers to help them to better constrain what is a terroir, to try to establish better relationships between the wines they produce and the soil and the subsoil it comes from.

[00:21:01] So why do you think so little work had been done at kind of a more micro level? Why do you think the work that had been done was so generalized across the region?

[00:21:11] I think the wine growers were not wondering a lot as they are today. And things previously were to be able to understand roughly how the landscape created throughout the long geological historical times, to understand which kind of limestone you have and how it deposited.

[00:21:35] But people were not wondering as much as it is today regarding clear relationships between soil, subsoil and the wine resulting from. So it was more about the history of the formation of the place and the kind of rock rather than

[00:21:53] something you've pointed out to me is that, you know, the rock types are a family, but it's really the distribution of them. That's a key thing. So they weren't looking so much at the distribution

[00:22:03] of the rocks. They were looking more at how it formed, how it got to this place and then kind of the general sense of the area. Is that correct? Yeah, for sure. The geological history is quite the same for all the Cote d'Or and even Cote

[00:22:17] Chalonnaise and the Maconais. And you have to imagine that when the sediments deposited, the landscape was boring, very monotonous with no major fluctuation. It was just a tropical sea, a shallow tropical sea, no relief, no hillside. You had a lagoon from Dijon up to the southern

[00:22:40] part of Burgundy. You can find the same kind of rocks from the Solitrae rock up to the north of Dijon with no fluctuation. It's not a good way to explain the high rock diversity and the high

[00:22:55] wine diversity along the Cote. The diversity is mainly due to the faulting, to the fractures that occurred a long time after the deposit of the sediments due to an alpine... The orogeny, formation of the Alps.

[00:23:15] Yeah, exactly. The faulting mostly parallel to the hillside. The distribution of the rocks is responsible of the diversity because due to the faulting, you increase the diversity, you mix the occurrences of the limestone.

[00:23:34] So there's really two parts of the history there. There's how the rock got there in the first place. So there was calcium carbonate that was deposited from these lagoons and then the water went away and receded and you have this rock there, limestone. And then there's faulting that

[00:23:50] happens as a result of the Alps being formed, not here, but it affected here in kind of a ripple way. Like when you throw a rock into the water, it ripples further out. And this was one of those

[00:24:02] ripple points and what the ripples were was faults, which you said, and faults are where there's a break and so where one part of the ground moves below another part. Exactly. Sediments deposited a long, long time ago during the Jurassic. It is for the

[00:24:20] coat between 180 and 155 million years ago. So it's a very long time. And the faulting occurred between 44 and 23 million years ago. So since 23 million years ago, the relief, the coat does exist. But there was over a hundred million years there where the soil was there, but the faults weren't.

[00:24:44] Yes, exactly. So there is a long period between the deposits of the rocks and the faulting. And the faulting stopped around 23 million years ago. And since 23 million years, the erosional processes have smoothened the hill slope and tended to erase the faults. So nowadays it's very

[00:25:09] hard to see the faults along the coat. There are only few places where you can observe them, only few places, not a lot. So even though the faults were what really formed the landscape,

[00:25:22] they're not directly visible just by walking up to them, except in a handful of places, actually. If you go to Le Montrachet, for instance, you are able to see a slight difference in elevation

[00:25:36] due to a fault. If you go to Le Musigny, westward of Le Musigny, it is the same. You can see a noble plain corresponding to a fault. In those two cases, you can see the fault because in the

[00:25:51] collapsed compartment, you've got some soft sediment named marl. Marl is a rock made up of a mixture of carbonate and clay, and it's easier to erode. And as it is easier to erode, it has

[00:26:07] been eroded. And as a consequence, you can see the fault, you can see the plain, but it's something very rare because very often along the coat, the faults are making two limestone being one close to the other and limestone against limestone. You don't see any difference in elevation.

[00:26:28] But it seems also that over time, different cultures have built either paths or roads where the faults are. Sometimes I feel like when I'm on a pathway, I'm actually walking with a fault.

[00:26:41] You can encounter some faults that are hidden below some path, but I think that most of them are not below the path, but they are in between the lieux d'Eau. And it was also something quite

[00:26:56] new for me because I thought when I started working for the wine growers, I really thought that the hierarchy, the lieux d'Eau have been delimited regarding strongly soil and subsoil properties. And I realized that it was not true, not at all sometimes. And it was really something

[00:27:18] surprising for me. And my first study, the first study that I realized was from Marcenet, the appellation Marcenet in 2003. They asked for me a detailed geological study because they wanted to request for Premier Cru and also some new village appellations. And I did my study,

[00:27:41] I saw that the faults were not necessarily in between the climat, but most of the time into the climat. And I made my presentation to the wine growers and I was unable to conclude because I

[00:27:56] was unable to say properly to the wine growers, for sure you've got one lieux d'Eau lying onto this kind of limestone and the other lieux d'Eau lying onto this other kind of limestone. And I

[00:28:08] said, OK, you see the map, the faults are into the climat. So I am unable to conclude because there is no typical rock associated to one typical climat. There is no clear matching

[00:28:24] regarding limits of the lieux d'Eau and the limits of the geology. And one wine grower, it was Bruno Clerc, helped me. He said to me, but Françoise, probably the fact that you've got several types

[00:28:38] of limestone into one given lieux d'Eau and some other type of limestone, another association into another lieux d'Eau, probably it could be an explanation or it could be part of the explanation

[00:28:51] of the diversity and of the identity of the climat. But it was really something surprising for me. You assumed going into it that there would be clarity when you came out the other side,

[00:29:03] you know, that this would line up with that. But what you found is actually that the more you dug into the subject literally, that actually it's a lot more complex than that. There's not a lot

[00:29:13] of clear cut answers on this subject. That's true. When I started working for the wine growers, I was convinced that everything has been understood and things could be simple. And nowadays I think that I am unable to answer properly any questions simply regarding geology,

[00:29:33] regarding the soil distribution, regarding the subsoil distribution. So, you know, for example, you've said that there's probably 15 types of Jurassic rock and 10 of those are limestone. So there's like a number of different kinds of limestone.

[00:29:47] Yeah, during the Jurassic times, even if it was a shallow sea, the environment changed from one period to the other. And even if the carbonate sedimentation was able to occur during the whole

[00:30:02] Jurassic time, depending on if the water was dominated by the tidal action, by the wave action, if you were very close to the shoreline, if you were protected from the wave action by a barrier

[00:30:17] and lying into a lagoon, you will have so many different types of sediments that are going to accumulate that you can find different types of limestone. And for sure it's made up of calcium carbonate, but depending on if it was in a quiet environment like a lagoon where

[00:30:38] micro crystals of limestone are able to precipitate and to accumulate, forming a massive mud or if the sedimentation occurred under daily deposit due to the tide action, forming some small beds tide after tide, or if the deposits formed under the wave action, always removing some

[00:31:01] sands made up of limestone pieces, shall debris and so on, you will get some rocks that are going to be different because it can be made up of massive metric beds or some oblique beds no more

[00:31:18] than a few centimeters thick or thicker beds due to the wave action. And you will get different types of limestones and those limestones, even if they are most of the time made up of more than 80-90%

[00:31:34] of limestone, they are going to weather differently, different ways because the water is not going to penetrate and to deepen and to weather the same way a massive bed of limestone or limestone made

[00:31:49] up of some slates and you will find different way of root exploration, you will find different ways of water storage and you will find different soils resulting from different kind of limestone.

[00:32:06] And the issue really for wine is that it's not just that there's a diversity of different limestone types and the ways that you were describing how they were formed in the lagoon, and then it's not

[00:32:15] just that they weather differently, it's that in your research what you found is that you can find the same type of rock in a Grand Cru vineyard and in a Vallage vineyard. And so this becomes

[00:32:26] the complicating factor that it's not a one-to-one correlation. For you, typically you can't say well you have this, so this. Yeah, once again it was something very surprising for me because I've got

[00:32:41] very close friends in Alsace and in Alsace the Grand Cru have been established in the 70s and they are strongly based upon the geology and the soil properties. And when I started to work

[00:32:55] in Burgundy, I was convinced that below the Grand Cru you won't find the same subsoils than below a Village or Premier Cru or regional populations. And very rapidly I realized that yes it was possible

[00:33:10] and you can have specific kind of limestone under a Grand Cru and you can find this specific kind of limestone under Premier Cru but also Village and sometimes regional populations. And it was

[00:33:21] the most amazing thing for me that there are no clear relationships between the soils and subsoils and the hierarchy because other parameters, both environmental natural parameters but also human factors have been involved into the hierarchy when it has been established in the 30s, in the 1930s.

[00:33:46] And it was really surprising for me. Some of the factors that might contribute to one being Village and one being Grand Cru would be things like exposure on the slope or the air circulation

[00:34:01] in the vineyard or the way that it's susceptible to rain or hail or frost. These are things that might affect. Definitely. What I observed is the best places are located where all the parameters

[00:34:17] are converging to be the best. It's regarding elevation not too high, not too low, regarding the temperature not too cold, not too warm, regarding exposure not too hot, not too sunny or not

[00:34:32] too exposed to the shadow, for the soil not too thick, not too thin, not too stony, not too rich in clay and so on and so on. So it's most of the time it's where the factors are the best and the

[00:34:47] best plots are located. And most of the time along the coat you've got a concave shape and most of the time the best places, the Grand Cru are located at the inflection points where the slopes are not

[00:35:02] too steep, not too gentle, just the best places. For sure you are in France and we love the exceptions in France. So if you consider for instance Corton or Charlemagne, they climb very

[00:35:16] high along the hill slope so it's not always true but most of the time it's just the inflection point where all the parameters are not extreme. It's the Goldilocks, you're looking for the

[00:35:29] Goldilocks. Exactly, exactly. And the thing is in one way I think that would seem to argue against the idea of geology being a part of terroir but in another way I think it actually

[00:35:41] makes perfect sense if you think about it from the drinking of wine because we think of Moussigny and Bonmar as both great but they clearly taste different and so if they both had the same

[00:35:53] rock underneath them I mean that might not even make sense. Yeah, yeah exactly. It's something hard to understand for me because for sure the roots are exploring the subsoil and the soil for sure

[00:36:07] and they are taking some nutrients in the soil, they are looking for some water and if you have two different wines like Moussigny and Bonmar and if you imagine that both are growing above the same limestone, massive limestone deposited in a lagoon, it's something hard to imagine.

[00:36:29] You can also compare them with Charm or Mazoyer in Gevrey-Chambertin. It is the same subsoil for part of those climats and you don't definitely have the same wine in your glass if you drink

[00:36:43] a Moussigny, a Charm-Chambertin or an Amoureuse and for sure the subsoil and the soil are involved into the wine properties but it's not simple relationships and it's not something simple to explain with direct links that you can translate immediately in the wine when you taste it.

[00:37:04] Sometimes when people talk about Burgundy villages at the village level they'll talk about kind of pairs so like Chambault, Moussigny and Volnay as kind of a pair and I know mostly you've worked

[00:37:15] in the Côte d'Inoui in terms of soil maps and rock types but do you see that those kind of paired phenomenons that might have some similarity in terms of the rocks? I know regarding Volnay and

[00:37:27] Chambault but I can't explain it simply only with soils and subsoils because you've got the same kinds of soils in Chambault-Moussigny for instance than in Gevrey or Moray and you don't have not at

[00:37:41] all the same kind of wines and you've got some differences between Volnay and Chambault regarding the soils and the subsoils and you've got the same structure of wine so it's really hard for me to

[00:37:56] explain it simply. So I think when I speak with growers here I mean something that comes up a lot is the idea that some places are more on the rock and some places are more on the clay which would be

[00:38:07] you know decomposed rock basically. Yeah most of the time along the coast the subsoil is mostly made up of limestone than clay. There are some marls but not a lot probably slightly more marls

[00:38:22] in the Côte de Beaune than in the Côte d'Inoui. Côte d'Inoui is definitely dominated by the limestone Regarding the soils, when the limestone decomposes it is dissolved by the water and when it's

[00:38:36] dissolved what is remaining forming the soil is what can't be dissolved. Most of the time these are the clay so the clay is the remains of limestone that has been decomposed. So something that can

[00:38:50] seem very strange is that if you consider a pure limestone like the Comblanchien limestone and if you weather it, it's made up of 99% of limestone and 1% of clay and if you dissolve it

[00:39:05] if you dissolve one meter of Comblanchien limestone you will only get one centimeter of clay but the soil remaining of the limestone weathering is a soil rich in clay. So as something that can seem

[00:39:21] not logical but if you've got a subsoil rich in limestone very often the soil is going to be rich in clay whereas if you've got a marl where the water circulates very badly due to the amount

[00:39:35] of clay the limestone is going to be dissolved but the calcium and the CO2 can't be evacuated by the water because it circulates badly and the limestone is remaining in the soil and the soil

[00:39:48] is richer in limestone if you've got a marl below than if you've got a limestone. So you've got both clay and limestone into the soils. It's not easy to establish some strict links with the nature of

[00:40:04] the soil and the properties of the wines. For sure when you've got a lot of clay it is probably translated into the wine with some tannins and you can feel more present, not necessarily harsh

[00:40:21] they are rounded but they are maybe probably more present and if you've got some limestone probably a kind of straightness. It does not prevent the complexity but you've got a kind of column that is guiding the wine maybe more accurately but I think it's not possible to say

[00:40:44] to you okay this kind of limestone is going to give you this kind of wine because if it was true for instance Chambertin, Clôbe de Baize would have the same properties and

[00:40:58] Jouvret, Chambertin, Premier Cru, Les Champots or so on I don't know but you will find the same 15 or 20 types of wines along the coast. It would be boring but there are some general trends that

[00:41:13] you can pick. For instance regarding the surficial deposits you've got a lot of alluvial deposits at the outlet of the dry valleys that Burgundy names the Combe along the coast. A Combe is a

[00:41:27] break in the slope through the Combe what comes through is soil but then also wind and it can bring soil with it. For sure those valleys formed during the Quaternary era and especially during

[00:41:40] the Ice Ages when the climate was very cold we had here in the coast what we call a permafrost deeply frozen soil all year long and during spring and summer when the temperatures became just above zero degrees Celsius water melted but superficially and the melted water was unable

[00:42:01] to deepen due to the ice that remained below and at that time the water onto the plateaus tended to reach the zone valley by gravity and they dug the valleys due to the seasonal action of rivers

[00:42:17] during the Ice Ages. Those rivers eroded the hill slope and created the valleys, created the Combe and at the outlet of the valleys the water spread widely because it was not guided anymore by the

[00:42:32] valley sides and abandoned all the materials that have been transported at the outlet of the valley giving pans, giving alluvial deposits. Most of the people imagine that you can only get some

[00:42:47] excellent wines if the subsoil is a hard massive limestone but I've seen so many plots along the coast where the subsoil is made up of angular gravels resulting from daily frozen thaw cycles

[00:43:05] covering the hill slope, where the subsoil is made up of alluvial deposits made up of pebbles, gravels, sands, clay mixed together and giving some excellent wines then you can't keep the ideas and

[00:43:22] only pure limestone would be able to give you an excellent wine. So we've already said that you can have the same type of limestone underneath a Grand Cru and underneath a Village or maybe a

[00:43:34] Premier Cru but is there any type of limestone that you definitely don't find in either? Like is there any kind of limestone that you never find under a Grand Cru or that you never find under a Village?

[00:43:46] No I don't think so because even alluvial fans for instance I found them lying under some Grand Cru especially close to Flagey-Echeuseau and Vaux-en-Romanée so you've got some surficial deposits under the Grand Cru whereas everybody is thinking no it's not possible a Grand Cru should be lying

[00:44:09] onto hard rock, Jurassic rock if it's not a limestone if it's not a true and massive limestone it's not a good wine. If I consider Pouligny-Montrachet for instance, Pouligny-Montrachet is an appellation that develops both quite high along the slope but also very very very

[00:44:28] far eastward and Pouligny-Montrachet owns some Grand Cru lying onto Coluvium and Alluvium not well-known for their high quality and whatever if you drink some Bataar-Montrachet you can have an excellent moment drinking some Bataar-Montrachet and the same for Le Montrachet, part of Le

[00:44:48] Montrachet for instance is lying onto Alluvium deposits and we don't imagine this when we think about the Grand Cru. So those are a lot of the complications that make the understanding of the topic that more complex but you had mentioned at the beginning that there were some generalizations

[00:45:07] that could be made some ideas that you had come to over time that did work although there was only a few and so what are those? The general organization of the coat, the general distribution, the general

[00:45:22] way the rock have been distributed now I think that with my colleague we start to better understand the way the rocks have been fractured and the way it works. The density of the faulting also the surficial deposits how they develop where they lie because the exposure is probably

[00:45:47] strongly influencing the debris along the slopes and you can find more debris if you are eastward orientated or if you are turned towards the north rather than if you are turned towards the south for instance. These are the general key points regarding the regional knowledge of the coat.

[00:46:12] And that exposure question what you've explained to me in the past is that the Côte de Nuit basically from say Marseillais down to Nuit-Saint-Georges faces east and once you get below

[00:46:25] that so once actually starting at Nuit-Saint-Georges and then going down into the Côte de Beaune it faces southeast. Yeah there are some differences due to the geological history and you won't find the same

[00:46:38] rocks, the fault orientation is not exactly the same and the geology is responsible of the differences in exposure. In the Côte de Nuit the valleys are straight and narrow so it's going

[00:46:54] to prevent the vineyard to be cultivated into the Combe whereas in Côte de Beaune due to a higher amount of clay due to the marl it's easier to erode and then you can have some wider valleys

[00:47:08] some broader valleys and you will find some vineyard with a huge exposure diversity, a bigger diversity than in the Côte de Nuit and for sure you're further south in the Côte de Beaune than

[00:47:27] in the Côte de Nuit so you add the factors to have small climatic differences regarding both exposure but also microclimatic conditions that are going to create differences in ripeness and

[00:47:43] things like that. And so what you've already said is that within a set of rocks the rocks is the same set but it's the distribution of the rocks along the slope that creates the difference of

[00:47:55] the place and so speaking generally what is the distribution say if we were to just talk about the Côte de Nuit for a minute? For instance from the south of the Appalachian Marsanais, the south of

[00:48:10] the village of Couchet up to the north of the village of Gevray-Chambertin the rock distribution is arranged so that you've got an outcrop of a specific rock, a marl rich in clay that is

[00:48:24] outcropping only there in the Côte de Nuit so you've got some specificity from the south of the Appalachian Marsanais up to the north of the Appalachian of Gevray because you won't find this

[00:48:37] rock along the whole coat before Centenais to the south. You won't find it in the southern part of the Côte de Nuit for instance and this can give you some specific criterion to the vineyard, to the vines,

[00:48:52] also regarding this area. The Comblanchien limestone for instance is very often not outcropping below the vineyard apart in the eastern part of Gevray-Chambertin, Mazoyer and Charme, apart in Chambol-Musigny with Les Amoureuses and Le Musigny and also Les Charmes at the east of

[00:49:18] the village of Chambol but elsewhere it's something very uncommon. So you will find some specificities for each village and also something important that I did not mention before is that you've got for sure a lot of faults that are parallel to the landscape, to the hill slope

[00:49:40] but you have some faults that are transverse, that are oblique and that cut the main faults and most of the times those faults that are transverse, not parallel to the hill slope

[00:49:54] are underlined by the valleys, they are underlined by the comb because it was easier for the water stream to erode something that has already been broken. The comb, the valleys dug where the faults

[00:50:09] were and very often from one valley to the other you've got a unique rock distribution but if you cross the valley, if you cross the comb and go further south or further north you will find another rock distribution because those transverse faults act like strike-slip faults and they

[00:50:32] shifted the compartments, they shifted the step stairs from one side of the valley to the others and you find some differences not from one village to the other, not from one operation to the others

[00:50:51] but we are going to find some geological variation, some differences in the rock distribution from one side of the valley and the others and to my opinion, geologically speaking, the main differences is not between Vaux-en-Romanée and Foujaux or Chambord-Musigny for instance but it is between

[00:51:14] the northern part of the Combe d'Orvaux and the southern part of the Combe d'Orvaux, northern part of the Combe Brûlée and the southern part of the Combe Brûlée in Vaux-en-Romanée for instance.

[00:51:24] Oh that's very interesting, so the combs are really a major thing. Yes, to my opinion, both due to the microclimatic influences because of the cool air coming from the plateau and going to the vineyard, because of the alluvial materials that have been eroded and deposited at the outlets

[00:51:43] and because of their importance because they underline some transverse fault that made some differences into the rock distributions from one hillside to the other. So that's a major way that the distribution stops being the same is through a comb? Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely it is

[00:52:03] something very important and another thing also because I already read this in some books, those valleys have been dug by seasonal rivers and they are not at all the result of ice tongues

[00:52:18] even if the climate was very cold when they formed, even if it was some ice ages there were no glaciers here in Burgundy. Okay so it's really river-based? Yeah, definitely river-based. So I know

[00:52:31] some villages where you've done a lot of work in terms of samples are Fison, Gévray, Morissantini and Chambault, that kind of corridor is a place where you've done a lot of work and so I was

[00:52:44] wondering if we could kind of take the major crews of Gévray, Morissantini and Chambault and you could kind of discuss some of the characteristics of them if we were to kind of go north to south.

[00:52:56] Regarding the Côte de Nuit I think that the main thing is that limestone is clearly dominating the subsoil composition and there are really few moors into the subsoils. Gévray probably the main

[00:53:12] characteristic is the large alluvial fan at the outlet of the Combe Lavo because the Combe is really I think one of the major valleys along the Côte cutting the hill slope. Because there was no

[00:53:30] big town in Gévray-Chambartin, there has been very few buildings and this alluvial fan has been kept as a place where the vine cultivation is well developed. It's not the case in Marseillais for instance because it's closer from Dijon and the alluvial fan in Marseillais has been submitted

[00:53:52] to house growing rather than vine growing. So maybe the first characteristic in Gévray is this one, the alluvial fan development. The crinole limestone is a limestone resulting from the accumulation of shell debris of organisms called crinoids and the crinoids are belonging to the

[00:54:15] family of starfishes, of urchins. The northern part is characterized by crinoid or limestone and the marl with small micas and quartz typical of this part of the Côte de Nuit. The southern part of Gévray-Chambartin is characterized by a very very short slope.

[00:54:41] The vineyard is not climbing very high along the slope, it's limited very rapidly by the forest and the Grand Cru develops from the limit between forest and vineyard up to the main road between

[00:54:57] Dijon and Beaune. It could seem surprising for some people saying okay but there is no good limestone there despite of this first impression there is some hard limestone up to the main road and especially the Comblanchier limestone with thin soils that can assure a kind of hydrax stress

[00:55:19] to the vineyard and maybe help to have excellent wines coming from this area. So this is the specificity of Gévray-Chambartin and if you go from Gévray to Moray-Saint-Denis, if you drive

[00:55:36] along the Grand Cru road you don't see any major difference because the limit between Gévray and Moray is a small valley it's named Combe Grisard and the Combe Grisard is not one of the major

[00:55:50] combes of the Côte with steep shoulders made up of Comblanchier limestone. You've got a hollow covered by woods and you don't notice any major difference. However when you go further south and you when you arrive to Moray-Saint-Denis with Les Monts-Luisants, with Claude Saint-Denis,

[00:56:11] you can observe that the slope is not at all the same. Instead of a short general slope you've got a long very long and very steep slope where the vineyard is cultivated very high compared to

[00:56:25] Gévray-Chambartin and if you look at both sides of the Combe Grisard you really see strong differences and in Moray-Saint-Denis covering the Monts-Luisants, the upper part of Claude Saint-Denis and Claude Laroche you will find very very thick debris made up of angular gravels of Comblanchier limestone

[00:56:48] that are characteristic we call them grésilité, bellied scree in french and it's a typical surficial deposit that is characteristic of the northern part of Moray-Saint-Denis. So even if Moray-Saint-Denis and Gévray are very close to each other and if they are neighbors you can find

[00:57:11] different kinds of subsoils, different kinds of soils, so different kinds of wines in those Grands Crues area comparing Moray-Saint-Denis and Gévray-Chambartin. And if you go further south, if you cross the Combe of Moray-Saint-Denis and if you go to Claude Etar, Claude Elambret and Les Bonnemars

[00:57:31] because of the transverse faulting you'll find some different soils and some different subsoils and definitely Claude Etar and Claude Elambret are characterized by a big diversity in the soils and the subsoils with subsoils completely different from the northern part of Moray-Saint-Denis.

[00:57:51] There is quite no bedded scree, quite no debris anymore in the southern part. We find crinoidal limestone and a mar rich in very small oyster shell in Claude Etar and Claude Elambret that were not outcropping in the Mont-Louisant and Claude Saint-Denis. So different kinds of soils

[00:58:11] and subsoils so you can find each time some differences and some specificity from one appellation to the other and from one side of the appellation and the other. Les Bonnemars is a grand cru that extends both in Moray-Saint-Denis and Chambolles and even if I

[00:58:30] already read that you can see some differences from the Moray side and the Chambolles side, geologically speaking it's not true. You will find a difference from the lower part to the east and

[00:58:43] the upper part to the west of Les Bonnemars because you've got some mars with some small oyster shell in the upper part and crinoidal limestone in the lower part giving the white soils for the mars and the red soils for the crinoidal limestone for Les Bonnemars but no

[00:59:05] difference between Moray-Saint-Denis and Chambolles-Musigny. The northern hillside of Chambolles-Musigny is quite similar to the southern hillside of Moray-Saint-Denis so Les Crats, Les Fueys in Chambolles exhibits the same kind of subsoil diversities and Les Bonnemars

[00:59:25] and a part of Claude Elambret and Claude Etat and if you cross the Combe of Chambolles-Musigny and go to the south you arrive in a completely different universe with a lot of Comblanchien limestone and no crinoidal limestone anymore. So once again it is the Combe that is responsible

[00:59:48] of the changes of the diversity in the subsoils rather than the limit between the two communes. So really in a geological sense what we see is zones that are often broken up by combs? Yeah yeah and the zones are limited by the combs and each zone is intensively

[01:00:12] faulted and fractured from the top of the hill slope. Because I think that a lot of people don't necessarily look at it that way. No because we were not aware of that 20 years before. I think it has been felt by some geologists

[01:00:30] and if you look at the previous geological maps that have been established in the 70s and 80s you feel that they were hesitating to put the same kind of geology from one side and the other

[01:00:45] of the Combe. But most of the time we didn't envisage it could be possible and it's just because we worked a detailed scale since 20 years then we have been able to evidence clearly that

[01:00:59] the differences occurred from one side to the other of the Combe. So it's quite a new result. For instance I work for several domains in Meursault and Meursault is a very interesting appellation for me. There is a big diversity the northern part close to Volney has its own

[01:01:20] characteristics and the southern part is intensively faulted with some types of limestones that are maybe less frequent and less common than elsewhere along the coast with some Premier Cru lying both in the good part of the fault with some limestones but some others lying in the bad part

[01:01:43] between quotes for sure with sediments richer in clay like the lower part of Les Champs for instance that is giving excellent wines but from a strict geological point of view it's not a good subsoil

[01:01:59] because it's made up of marl that deposited one and a half million years ago in fillings so typically what is described as bad soil for the vine cultivation. You know speaking to you it's almost like we are misunderstanding this subject by

[01:02:18] placing things into villages and we should place them into halves of villages almost because it very often you'll take a village like Meursault or like you did earlier with Gervais or with

[01:02:30] Maurice-Anthony and you'll kind of divide it in half and say the part that's closer to here is like this and a part that's closer to here is like this and so you know we think of Burgundy

[01:02:39] is very delimited but it almost sounds like you know we need to cut these villages in half and say like Meursault-Bas and Meursault-Bas, you know what I mean? The communes and the villages have been

[01:02:52] created at the beginning of the 19th century with Napoleon and the village was a center and the limits have been established around the village and when the ablation has been created every village has asked for the plot that they owned but definitely I'm not politically correct

[01:03:14] and I divide each village each time there is a valet because very often it corresponds to a limit geologically speaking. After the break we'll take what Francoise has told us already and apply that

[01:03:27] to what a vineyard has shared about his own vineyards. A particular vineyard in this case whom you may have heard of before, a vineyard named Christophe Rumier. The domain Georges Rumier is established physically in Chambolle. Most of the vineyards that we have to cultivate are on

[01:03:45] the village of Chambolle-Musigny also which for people who have traveled to Chambolle to Burgundy and have visited Chambolle you realize that it's a little apart from the national road. That's coming up right after this. Would you like to hear more new episodes of I'll Drink To That?

[01:04:05] Consider making a gift donation to support the program. You can donate from anywhere by making use of the PayPal or Stripe links on the show website and that website is alldrinktothatpod.com that's I-L-L drink to that p-o-d dot com to directly support the show. Look for the PayPal

[01:04:24] or Stripe insignia. Direct donations are the number one reason that this show continues to exist. Do your part today. When I interviewed Christophe Rumier this is how he described his thinking around producing a Chambolle-Musigny village. For people who have traveled to Chambolle to Burgundy

[01:04:44] and have visited Chambolle you realize that it's a little apart from the national road. It's probably the highest in elevation village of the Côte de Nuit. Most of the acreage of Chambolle

[01:04:59] Appellation is on the hillside. And for us also for the Domaine Georges Rumier the two-thirds of the acreage of Chambolle-Musigny is positioned on the hillside. And one-third is located on the flatter places where we have a deeper soil with more clay etc. All together these are very

[01:05:21] fragmented. I could bottle separately each of them of Chambolle-Musigny but I prefer the idea to combine them together so that this represents more what is Chambolle if you combine the different sections together. So we have different areas of Chambolle-Musigny and they differ. And Christophe

[01:05:41] blends them together to give a sense of the whole village in his final wine. A kind of complete village picture. But why might the areas within Chambolle-Musigny differ? Let's recall here what Francoise has already said. Geologically speaking the main differences is not between

[01:06:03] Vaux-en-Romanée and Voudreau or Chambolle-Musigny for instance but it is between the northern part of the Combe d'Orvaux and the southern part of the Combe d'Orvaux, northern part of the Combe

[01:06:14] Brulée and the southern part of the Combe Brulée in Vaux-en-Romanée for instance. This is the key point to understand. Francoise is saying that the village boundaries are not so important really.

[01:06:25] What is important is where the combs are, the breaks in the slope. And that is where you see the differentiation occur. And that is also why you see significant differences within villages. Because sometimes a break in the slope is situated within a village boundary. And that's not all.

[01:06:45] There is no clear matching regarding limits of the geodesy and the limits of the geology. Sometimes a fault has occurred even within a specific crew giving multiple types of geology within a single vineyard. For instance this is what Christophe Rumié shared about a specific

[01:07:05] vineyard he owns. The Mauray Saint-Denis Clos de la Bussière is two hectares fifty nine on one piece of a vineyard which is a real clo. Clo means a piece of land which is surrounded with a wall

[01:07:22] and it's a real clo built in the 12th century by monks. The name La Bussière comes from the abbey, the Abbey de la Bussière. And it's never been divided over time. The ownership has changed over time. My grandfather purchased in 53 but it's never been divided.

[01:07:45] But this is a different situation. This is Mauray Saint-Denis, the next village to the north of Chambol. The quality of the soil is very different. It's much more clay there. And a thick layer of

[01:07:59] clay on stones. And it makes a specific wine. By comparison to Chambol, it has bigger structure, more tannins. It's always slower to age also. And how would you, I mean you've said it a little bit

[01:08:16] about the clay, but the difference between Mauray Saint-Denis and Chambol in broad strokes, what is the difference? Everything in Burgundy is limestone and clay. What makes a real difference is the proportion of each other. And Chambol is very stony, so it's more calcaire, more limestone.

[01:08:37] When Mauray Saint-Denis has more clay often, and so is Gevraud-Chambertin, it's more clay. I think Mauray Saint-Denis is where the clay layer is the thickest probably. And something you've mentioned before about Clos de Bussière is that there's a little iron in there,

[01:08:55] in the soil. In this clay, yeah. And that also it's a double fault and the limestone has actually kind of gone vertical. So the kind of limestone changes a lot within the monopole. Exactly, yeah, which is very peculiar. I've been explained that by a geologist, Françoise Vannier,

[01:09:13] who has made studies and she said you have a very, very peculiar vineyard because instead of sliding, the stones have bent. And so yes, of course when you move on the surface of the Clos de Bussière, there's a change in the age of the limestone.

[01:09:31] When I spoke with Benjamin Leroux, he used to work at Clos d'Epinou, and he really felt that the monks had got it right. The walls were in the right place for a good wine. He always did

[01:09:42] these micro-vinifications and he just found the whole thing was better if you just blended it. And very diverse inside the walls, soil types. But he found that they had put the walls in the

[01:09:54] right place. Do you feel the same way about Clos de Bussière? Because it kind of feels like you do, like that it's diverse but it's a good whole. Oh yeah, I totally fulfill that. That's right.

[01:10:04] I think monks had a certain instinct to observe everything that was helpful for agriculture and they positioned the Clos de Bussière, I mean the walls just at the place where the geology underneath has something specific. And it's right, it's exactly where it has to be.

[01:10:28] We'll hear from François Vannier about topics like iron oxide, multiple types of clay in a vineyard, and the effect that the walled vineyards in Burgundy, known as Clos, have on the development of topsoil within them. Something to keep in mind as we move into that

[01:10:44] discussion is that, as has been noted, many of the best vineyards of the Côte d'Or are situated on a slope. But a vineyard on a slope, anywhere in the world, will tend to erode and lose topsoil

[01:10:58] as that topsoil moves down the slope. And the thickness of a given soil can make several impacts on the resulting wine, as Christophe Rumier talked about. Do you find that there's less virus in Gévrey?

[01:11:13] Yes, and in Moray also. We have more viruses in Chambol. It's probably related to the shallow layers. And then in that shallow place where the root system is established, because it's more shallow, we have a higher concentration of worms, the nematodes,

[01:11:37] that are making the virus to travel from a vine to another. There's more clay in Gévrey and there's more clay in Moray-Sainte-Denis, and there seems to be less virus, and so maybe the nematodes don't travel as well in that kind of soil.

[01:11:49] They dilute into the thickness of the ground, I think. And it also seems that the yields are less in Chambol, so that would make sense too, because... Because it's poorer. It's poorer soils. Naturally, it gives you something else.

[01:12:02] Yes, exactly. It has an influence on that. And yes, it's right. This is what I mentioned about the white soil, what we call white soil. These are places where it does not encourage any kind

[01:12:13] of vigor in the vine. And you can see the result of that, the consequence of that. The berries are always smaller in those places than they are, for instance, in the Clos de la Bussière,

[01:12:25] where it's more clay. And because the size of the berry is smaller, there is a bigger proportion of skin to the volume of juice they contain, which has also an influence on the style of the wine.

[01:12:40] And the other thing that's so kind of notable about Gévrey is how many people seem to have vines that are over 100 years old. Like many people. Yes, which is rare in Chambol. Well, yes, that's right. It's probably... I didn't think like that. Never. Yeah, you are right.

[01:12:58] It's probably related to, again, the virus. Because when you have virus in the vines, it doesn't help to make them age very well. So probably related to that. As we return to the interview with François Vanier, keep in mind that as she talks about

[01:13:14] clove preserving topsoil, that may also be a reason that these walled vineyards are such a common feature of the landscape of Burgundy. It turns out that the thickness of the soil can

[01:13:25] play a role in the wines that come from a certain place, which is something to think about. Let's return to the interview with François. You know, we've spoken about how a lot of times there are really multiple types of

[01:13:40] Jurassic limestone that are next to each other. And I think we've looked at that through the lens of it being more complex than more simple in terms of looking at a crew at the boundaries

[01:13:50] and saying, well, the boundaries of this crew include multiple types. But one question I have is, so clay is the decomposition of this limestone. Is it possible that if you have multiple types

[01:14:03] and they mix together in their decomposition in the clay, that you would thus have something that was maybe more interesting for wine? For sure. If you've got some different types of limestone

[01:14:15] in one single clue, when the rocks are going to weather, they are going to give a specific soils with probably different types of clay. But you have to keep in mind also that the type of

[01:14:29] clay is strongly related to the climate when the rock weather and when the rocks weather. If you've got a tropical climate, you probably find more kaolinite, which is a kind of clay resulting from tropical climatic conditions. If the climate is very cold, like during the

[01:14:50] Quaternary era, you'll find more highlight. It's another kind of clay typical of the cold climate conditions. And if the rocks weather under temperate climatic conditions like they are nowadays, you'll find more smectite, which is a third different type of clay. All those types

[01:15:11] of clay can be encountered in Burgundy because during geological times we have been submitted to those different types of climates. Each type of limestone is going to give a specific type of soil

[01:15:27] with different amounts of clay for sure. In one clue, especially if the slope is steep, you can have a sliding of the clay from the top to the bottom. And if you plow and if you bring some

[01:15:43] earth from the bottom to the top after a strong storm, for instance, you will increase the mixing of the clay. But definitely, I'm not sure that you'll be able to identify specifically one clue

[01:15:58] by one type of clay. I kind of wonder if having multiple types might actually be more interesting for wine. You know, having those multiple types. The clay that forms specifically under temperate climatic conditions, named smectite, is the most interesting for the vine cultivation

[01:16:19] because the space between two sheets of clay, the space is able to move and it's able to store more nutrients and more water than the clays that formed under tropical climatic conditions or very cold climatic conditions. So definitely the clay forming since 11,000 years, especially,

[01:16:46] are the best ones for the vine cultivation. And so then some other complicating factors would be like the proportion of magnesium and then the proportion of iron oxide, right? Regarding the iron oxide, each time the soil is brownish, reddish, quite dark in Burgundy,

[01:17:04] it's due to iron oxides that formed when the rocks weathered. And I think iron oxide is a very common along the coast, except from the places where the soil is light colored, what we call Terre Blanche, the white earth, the light colored earth, the light colored soils.

[01:17:26] And those kind of soils is more common in the Côte de Beaune than in the Côte de Nuit. And they are associated to mars, very poor in iron. But iron oxide is common quite everywhere. Magnesium is not present everywhere along the coast, but a few rocks,

[01:17:50] few sedimentary rocks are richer in magnesium. And those sedimentary rocks richer in magnesium are not limestone, they are called dolomite. And those dolomite are very common, especially to the south of Beaune, up to the north of Volney. And so over Pomar, over the Pomar area,

[01:18:12] you've got a huge amount of magnesium. So is there another area of the Côte d'Or that has as much magnesium as Pomar? As far as I know today, Pomar is really an exception. And I don't know if it's

[01:18:26] true or not, but I talked to several people that explained to me that the amount of magnesium could be related to the powerful felt into the wines. So we spoke earlier about iron oxide, and you

[01:18:39] talked about that, and you said that the white stones are when there's no iron. And the thing about that is that often you hear growers say, well, I plant white vines on white stones, and

[01:18:51] I plant red vines on red stones. It would seem that the folk wisdom is to plant Pinot Noir on iron oxide. I learned this also because I was a student of Noël Le Neuf, who was very well-known by most of the

[01:19:06] wine growers along the Côte, because he worked a lot for the wine growers. And he was always saying, if the soil is red, you choose some red wine. And if the earth is light colored, you plant some white

[01:19:19] wines. And when I went in Meursault and when I worked in Meursault for the first time, it was for a well-known wine grower, and he said to me, OK, Françoise, you have to explain to the people

[01:19:32] we are going to talk to why there are so many Chardonnays in Meursault. And I said to him, OK, look at your soils, they are red colored, so you have to put away the Chardonnay and to plant

[01:19:46] some Pinot Noir, because definitely if the soil is reddish, you can't plant some Chardonnay. Now, there is no clear relationship. And I talked to some researchers at the university in history, and they said probably it's due to human factors rather than strict soil and subsoil properties.

[01:20:09] And I don't think that there are clear relationships with the maloccurrence and the Chardonnay cultivation, especially in Meursault, for instance. The best plots are lying onto limestones and not lying onto the marls. The white marls, they are at the upper part of the hill slope vineyard,

[01:20:31] and it is a plot owned by the commune. And it's not at all the most well-known plot and wine. So I'm not sure. The thing that could be true is that most of the time, the Chardonnay probably

[01:20:48] grows better if the subsoil is a marl than a limestone. And tasting the wines, for sure, even in the Côte de Nuit, if the subsoil is made up of marl, probably it's better with a Chardonnay

[01:21:02] than with a Pinot Noir. But there are so many exceptions that I am unable to establish a strict rule. So what you're saying is that if there's a bit more clay, that's actually good for Chardonnay?

[01:21:14] Probably. But I don't have ever seen any scientific study establishing strong links. It's just a feeling associated to a lot of observations. So we've now spoken about rocks and we've talked about subsoil, but are there complicating factors in terms of topsoil, the soil that's closest to

[01:21:34] the surface? Have things moved or been shifted over time? For sure, human activity has strongly influenced the soil composition in the Côte. There is a natural original part in the topsoil resulting from the weathering of the parent material, whether it is some surficial deposit

[01:21:59] or some Jurassic limestone. But since a few thousand years, soil has been cultivated, not necessarily regarding vine cultivation. Before the concrete has been used strongly for building the houses, here in Burgundy we used the stones, the limestone, and a lot of quarries

[01:22:21] have been excavated along the Côte to pick the stones to build for sure the churches, the castles, but also all the houses. And former quarries are very common along the Côte.

[01:22:36] If you consider the vineyard, very often you've got some former quarries that have been more or less filled by soil, by earth that has been brought in order to cultivate it as a vineyard.

[01:22:52] And it is nowadays not allowed by the official survey in charge of the operations, but it has been done before very, very frequently. And you can find even some parts of Grands Crus lying

[01:23:08] over former quarries where the earth has been brought. And this does not prevent the vine to give an excellent wine, but it is not soil resulting from the weathering of the subsoil. So you can find some strong soil changes due also to the input to the chemical products,

[01:23:31] to the fertilizers that have been brought. For instance, the potassium coming from Alsace has been put in huge quantities during the 20th century and a lot of earth that has been removed from one place to the other. What are some of those vineyards that are over quarries?

[01:23:52] Would Grillot be one of those? Yeah, for instance, regarding Les Grillots de Chambertin, if you look at the landscape, you've got a strange shape. It's a concave shape, a kind of hollow. If you look at carefully Grillot de Chambertin, the higher part, the western part is lying onto

[01:24:13] the crinoidal limestone, which is a limestone that has been strongly used to build the houses close to Gevre, Chambertin, Maurice-Saint-Denis and so on. And the lower part is lying onto another limestone, less interesting regarding the building of the houses. And if you look at the topsoil,

[01:24:33] where the crinoidal limestone is outcropping, you can find some pieces of old bottles, some pieces of bricks, some pieces of Comblanchard limestone, so many things that are not directly resulting from the withering of the crinoidal limestone. And to my opinion,

[01:24:53] it's definitely a former quarry that has been partly filled in order to be able to cultivate the vineyard. There are some clear former quarries in parts of Les Bonnemars, in part of

[01:25:08] Clos de Baize, and there are so many things that have been changed, removed. If you look at the old aerial photographs that are available on websites, you can clearly see that on the present

[01:25:26] day where renowned vineyards were exploited for the stones even a few decades ago. For instance, in Bonne, if you look at Clos de Mouche, in the 50s, in the 60s, places were not planted

[01:25:41] and were exploited for quarries. So one of the features that we do see throughout the Cote d'Or is clo, so we see these walled vineyards, and it's something that's very associated with Burgundy,

[01:25:53] and that may be for monastic reasons, the monastic roots of the region, but at the same time it does seem like that has an effect not just in delimiting vineyards, but also in creating their own

[01:26:06] environment. And how do you see the idea of a clo? They are a typical representation of what is the diversity in Burgundy, because you've got one single unit combining different things, and you've got

[01:26:21] one single result, and if you go from one clo to the other, you won't have the same wine, and definitely it's a good picture, a good illustration of the Burgundy. But in terms of soil,

[01:26:36] so here are things that I think you may have said, but I want to make sure that you believe this, that it stops erosion, because the rocks and the soil don't flow down as much if they're within

[01:26:47] the walls of the clo, and that you can actually build topsoil in a clo for the same reason, because especially towards the edge of the wall, you get more topsoil, because the wall is essentially

[01:26:59] preventing that topsoil from leaving. So, and that would seem like it would have ramifications for vines. Yes, for sure, you've got an influence onto the topsoil due to the walls, because most of the time

[01:27:12] you've got a slope, and the clo are located along the slope, and if you build a wall perpendicular to the slope, you are going to prevent the colluvium, you are going to prevent

[01:27:25] transfer of material by gravity along the slopes, and the wall is going to stop the transportation of the sediment, and it's going to increase the thickness of the soil due to this wall.

[01:27:40] And then you can encounter, and I always saw this behind some walls that have been destroyed to be rebuilt recently, that you can accumulate up to two meters of sediment just behind a wall.

[01:27:56] And we had this example in 2008, part of the Grand Cru Lattache has been put away, and we have had the opportunity to dig three pits along the whole Grand Cru, from the upper part up to the lower part.

[01:28:11] And what we observed in the lower part is that you've got a difference in elevation, there is a small path limiting towards the east, the Grand Cru Lattache, and this small path is about one meter

[01:28:27] higher than the communal location just below to the east. And when we dug the pit close to the cross at the lower part of Lattache, we realized that this wall has been responsible of the accumulation

[01:28:46] of about one meter of sediment. Below this meter of sediment, we found a level reaching stones, and in between those stones, made up of limestone, we found some coal debris, some pieces of pottery.

[01:29:02] And we were able to get an edge for those pieces of pottery, for those coal debris, and it was around 1000 years ago. So we knew that 1000 years ago, the level of the soil was

[01:29:21] one meter below what it is nowadays. And since 1000 years, about one meter of sediment has been accumulated due to the walls. And it's something just hard to imagine than just in a few centuries you can accumulate such a high amount of sediment just behind a wall.

[01:29:43] A clow will create its own environment when it comes to soil. Yeah, in a way that's true. Due to human activity, due to the wall, you can create a thicker soil than the vine would have found naturally before the walls.

[01:30:01] Sometimes when people come and speak about clow that are wine growers, they think about them as being delimited based on a sense of observation about how the wines will be in terms of when you blend

[01:30:14] them together, what that will taste like. And would you, you know, obviously you're not a historian, but would you lend credence to that? Or would you think that the clow were created for other reasons? Probably it's part of the explanation and probably you've got an identity in between.

[01:30:32] Nowadays most of the clow are divided in a lot of different owners. Few of them are still owned either as a monopoly like Le Clou de Tarre or quite by the same owner like Le Clou des Blancs Brés.

[01:30:47] But most of them are owned by different wine growers and it's harder to know exactly if there is an identity because you multiply the parameters when you've got different owners, different way of cultivating. But it's part of the reason so you've got different factors acting.

[01:31:06] But definitely I have got the feeling that there is a kind of identity regarding the wine characteristic for a given lieu d'y. And for sure you can find if you're, I am not, but if you're a very

[01:31:21] good wine taster you can find some the guidelines, the similarities, the characteristics that are able to identify a lieu d. I think in many ways it makes perfect sense that the vineyard map wouldn't have followed a geological map because geology as a science is much younger than the

[01:31:43] amount of time that vines have been planted there. It's worth recalling that people had an idea in western society of a biblical history of the earth but geology developed over time in different parts of the world as people were looking at things like fossils and rocks.

[01:32:01] And that timeline is vastly different than the biblical timeline and it's somewhat recent that we have come to this idea of having geology as a science whereas these vineyards have been planted

[01:32:14] for you know 1,500 years in some case and for sure they would have been looking at the biblical version of history not the geological version of history when they made them, when they delimited

[01:32:26] so it's in a way it makes sense. It's kind of like you're creating a new map to look at the geological map of the place that they would be so different but maybe you have some sense having

[01:32:37] grown up here and then having worked for different wine growers for two decades how the map of vineyards came to be? To my opinion even if they did not use the geology the empiric observation

[01:32:51] led the growers to guess that it was Richardine stone in that place, Richardine clay in this one, a cooler or warmer and so on. So even if they don't use the name Y2 light or

[01:33:06] Ladois limestone or I don't know what they observed and they knew where it was hard to to plant the vineyard or where it was easier and so on and so on. But obviously the human parameters have been stronger than the strict scientific geology or soil science criterion

[01:33:30] to delimitate and to establish the hierarchy. Probably there is something paradoxical because today we tend to justify everything with science and we try to explain each decision that has been taken in the past times by a scientific fact and it's very hard to match soil and subsoil nature

[01:33:58] and the hierarchy in Burgundy. And for instance if you look at Pomar, if you look at Nuit Saint Georges or Beaune there is no Grand Cru in Pomar, in Nuit Saint Georges or in Beaune and it's not

[01:34:11] because the soil quality is less good than in Vaux-ne-Romanée or Gevrey-Chambertin because as I said the geological history is the same, the subsoil is the same and if you look at for instance

[01:34:27] Les Greves or Les Bressons in Beaune, you have some soil and subsoil qualities that are the same and very good compared to other places but clearly in Beaune the negotiations prefer to have

[01:34:43] a huge amount of wine to be able to sell it and to mix it as they wish. In Pomar what I heard is that the wine growers didn't want to pay more taxes because if you've got some Grand Cru the

[01:34:59] taxes are higher and in Nuit Saint Georges what I heard is that one of the guys strongly involved in the 30s was Mr. Gouges and he owned a lot of Nuit Saint Georges, Les Saint Georges, Premier Cru

[01:35:17] and he did not want to be blamed as being able to get a Grand Cru just for himself so he preferred not to ask for any Grand Cru for Nuit Saint Georges. In other parts of France you've done a

[01:35:31] little bit of work in centimillion and you've done a little bit of work in Champagne and I could think of those as having calcium carbonate as well either in the form of limestone or in chalk and so

[01:35:42] if you were to kind of briefly look at how the Cote d'Or is different than those places... Yeah, I think that the identity card of the Cote d'Or is definitely the faulting creating

[01:35:54] the diversity and probably one other place where you can find some similarity with the Cote d'Or is the Alsace because in Alsace you've got the same geological history more or less. The rock diversity is probably higher in Alsace because you don't only have some limestone but also some

[01:36:14] sandstone, some granite, some volcanic rocks and so on. So probably the most similar place regarding Cote d'Or is the Alsace area. In Champagne the rock nature is simple, you have some chalk layers, a landscape enhanced by erosional processes creating some steep slopes and

[01:36:39] some gentle slopes but the diversity is so low compared to the Cote d'Or so it's not at all the same parameters that are involved in the vineyard diversity and in Champagne most of the time it is

[01:36:55] the surficial deposits, the debris, landslides that occur during quaternary periods that are responsible of the diversity more than the subsoil itself because very often it's chalk and even if it's another kind of chalk the roots are definitely thinking it's the same way for them to explore and

[01:37:17] to find some water and nutrients. Compared to Saint-Emilion, in Saint-Emilion what I thought is probably a huge role of the alluvium and the surficial deposits and once more less diversity, less variability regarding the rock types than in Cote d'Or. So do you think that there's a specific

[01:37:42] reason related to rocks why Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are planted in the Cote d'Or? By which I mean not necessarily related to water or to sunlight but to rocks. I thought it was more due to the climatic conditions regarding the Pinot Noir but maybe

[01:37:59] I'm wrong. Chardonnay is a kind of plastic grape variety able to adapt to many types of subsoils and I'm not sure that the limestone or the marls are the key point for the Chardonnay cultivation.

[01:38:14] Maybe limestone and Pinot Noir, it's maybe not a love story but they've got some attachment one to the other maybe but I'm not able to evidence it scientifically. Do you think that there might be a reason why related to rocks why the Cote d'Or deals in

[01:38:33] monosépage, why it deals in single grape variety wines as opposed to blends? For sure there are some historical reasons because one of the dukes of Burgundy said I don't want the gamay put it away

[01:38:47] even if I think that he has not been heard perfectly but no I'm not able to see clear evidences for the monosépage and just a single grape variety cultivation. Does it seem to you that vines have a connection with rocks more than other plants?

[01:39:09] Yeah, to my opinion it is one of the extraordinary plant material to announce and to reveal subsoil diversity. I'm not sure there is another plant that is able to reveal, to express as well as the vine does the subsoil diversity. Francois Vanier came to Burgundy and

[01:39:34] found that what was buried there was often a bit unexpected. Thank you very much for being here today. No, thank you very much for listening to me. Francois Vanier has her master's in geology and also her engineering certificate in petroleum exploration and she's a consultant in the wine

[01:39:50] industry. All Drink to That is hosted and produced by myself, Levi Dalton. Aaron Scala has contributed original pieces. Editorial assistance has been provided by Bill Kimsey. The show music was performed and composed by Rob Moose and Thomas Bartlett. Show artwork by Alicia Tanoian. T-shirts,

[01:40:10] sweatshirts, coffee mugs and so much more including show stickers, notebooks and even gift wrap are available for sale if you check the show website alldrinktothatpod.com that's I-L-L drink to that

[01:40:22] P-O-D dot com which is the same place you'd go to sign up for our email list or to make one of the crucially important donations that help keep this show operating. You can donate from anywhere using

[01:40:34] PayPal or Stripe on the show website. Remember to hit subscribe or to follow this show in your favorite podcast app please. That's super important to see every episode and thank you for listening. This episode came together with a lot of help from the Wasserman family

[01:41:07] who have also helped countless journalists and others learn more about Burgundy over the years. The Ladois limestone for instance, the name comes from the small town of Ladois just north of Bonne. The Ladois limestone results from deposits under tidal influences like the Mont Saint-Michel

[01:41:28] Bay in Normandy or the Fundy Bay in Canada for instance and twice a day you've got some tides and each time you've got a tide you've got a small deposit and you are able to see in this limestone

[01:41:44] more or less thick beds due to the moon cycle and it's just funny to be able to say okay this was this period of moon or that period of the moon cycle 165 million years ago. Yeah that's interesting

[01:42:01] in terms of you know how people talk about other things related to agriculture in terms of moon cycles so we think about when to rack or you know the type of wind that's coming through might

[01:42:11] affect the pressure or the type of treatments we might use when we might drink a wine and yet here's one more which is that the formation of the rock underneath. Yeah the formation of the rock

[01:42:24] can be associated to the moon cycle, the growing of some shells is also associated to the moon cycles. Geologists are able to evidence regarding oyster shells for instance that they grew strongly

[01:42:40] linked to the moon cycles and we are able to count one day, two days, three days, and so on and so on.