Burgundy for wine lovers

Understanding the Côte d'Or: a brief orientation

The Côte d'Or divides neatly into two. The Côte de Nuits runs from Marsannay, on the southern fringes of Dijon, to Corgoloin just north of Nuits-Saint-Georges: this is almost exclusively red wine country, home to Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-Saint-Denis, Chambolle-Musigny, Vougeot, Vosne-Romanée and the village that gives Pinot Noir its highest expression. The Côte de Beaune picks up south of Nuits, running through Beaune itself and then Pommard, Volnay, Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet to Santenay: here the greatest whites appear alongside fine reds, with the Chardonnays of Meursault and the two Montrachets representing a separate kind of glory.

Knowing which half you want to focus on shapes everything: where you stay, which domaines you contact, what you eat and how long you need. Most visitors with serious intent spend at least a week, divided between a base in or close to Beaune — the natural hub — and two or three days exploring north into the Côte de Nuits. A fortnight is better.

The appellation hierarchy: the essentials

Burgundy operates a four-tier appellation system, and understanding it saves considerable confusion at the cellar door. Regional appellations — Bourgogne Rouge, Bourgogne Blanc — cover wine made from grapes grown anywhere in the region. Village appellations (Gevrey-Chambertin, Meursault, Volnay) indicate wine from a single commune. Premier cru designations attach a named vineyard to the village name — Volnay Premier Cru Les Champans, for instance. At the apex sit the grands crus: single named vineyards with their own AOC, independent of any village name. Chambertin, Musigny, Romanée-Conti, Montrachet — these stand alone.

This hierarchy matters at the cellar door because domaines often produce wine at several levels, and understanding what you are tasting and why it costs what it costs makes the conversation far more rewarding.

Getting there and getting around

By Eurostar and TGV

Beaune sits on the TGV Méditerranée line, with a direct service from Paris Gare de Lyon taking approximately two hours. From London St Pancras, a morning Eurostar to Paris followed by a connecting TGV puts you in Beaune by mid-afternoon with luggage. It is an elegant journey, and for a holiday that will be conducted largely at walking pace among vineyards, arriving by train feels entirely appropriate.

The nearest mainline TGV station is Le Creusot-Montceau, about 30 kilometres from Beaune, served by some services. Beaune itself is served by regional TER trains from Dijon, which connects to the TGV network. Dijon is worth a night in its own right — the ducal palace, the market, a meal at a good Burgundian table — and many visitors use it as a comfortable arrival point before driving south.

Car hire and self-drive

The Côte d'Or is emphatically car country. The Route des Grands Crus, the D122 that threads through every significant village from Marsannay to Santenay, is not well served by public transport, and spontaneous detours to lesser-known villages — Fixin, Saint-Aubin, Auxey-Duresses — require your own wheels. Car hire from Dijon, Lyon or Paris is straightforward and costs are reasonable out of high season.

The obvious difficulty is wine. Serious tasting at multiple domaines in a day is incompatible with driving, and this is where having a local driver or a professionally guided day becomes not a luxury but a practical necessity. It is also worth noting that the D122 in harvest season (late September to mid-October) carries slow-moving agricultural traffic, and patience is part of the experience.

Fly-drive from London

Lyon Saint-Exupéry is approximately one hour from Beaune by car and has good connections from London Heathrow, Gatwick and Edinburgh. It is often the most practical gateway for those who want to combine Beaune with a night or two in Lyon — one of France's great eating cities — either at the start or end of a Burgundy trip.

Where to stay

Beaune

Beaune is the obvious base and functions well as one. It is a handsome medieval town with a genuinely good restaurant culture, walkable wine merchants and a central position between the two Côtes. The Hôtel Le Cep, within the ancient walls, is the classic choice for visitors with serious wine intent: its cellar and staff are equal to most questions, and the standard of room is high. The Loiseau des Vignes, attached to the Loiseau group's wine hotel, pitches itself squarely at the food-and-wine traveller. For something more intimate and less hotel-like, a number of maisons d'hôtes in the villages of the Côte de Beaune offer genuine immersion — staying in Meursault, Pommard or Volnay puts you among the vineyards rather than the tourist infrastructure.

Dijon

Dijon repays a night or two at either end of a trip. The old quarter around the ducal palace and the covered market (Les Halles, designed by Gustave Eiffel) is one of the most satisfying city centres in eastern France, and the restaurant scene is serious. Dijon also gives access to the northern end of the Côte de Nuits with slightly more ease than Beaune, which matters if Gevrey-Chambertin and Chambolle-Musigny are priorities.

The villages

Staying in a village on the Côte itself — Gevrey-Chambertin, Chambolle-Musigny, Meursault — gives the holiday a different character: quieter evenings, the possibility of walking the vineyards at dusk, and the occasional encounter with a vigneron that could not happen from a hotel lobby. This is the kind of arrangement that benefits from local knowledge about which properties are genuinely welcoming, which offer good breakfasts, and where the nearest decent dinner is.

Visiting the domaines

How visits work

Burgundy is not Bordeaux. The great estates here are overwhelmingly family-owned, often farming a scatter of small parcels across multiple appellations, and cellar-door visits are conducted on a personal rather than commercial scale. The most sought-after domaines — Rousseau, Leroy, de la Romanée-Conti, Leflaive, Lafon — do not receive casual visitors; access comes through longstanding relationships, allocation lists, or introductions. This is not a reason for disappointment but an invitation to reframe expectations: there are dozens of excellent producers who welcome serious visitors and who make wines of real distinction.

Most domaine visits involve tasting from barrel and/or bottle, a walk through the winery, and a conversation with a family member or cellarmaster. They are rarely quick — allow ninety minutes to two hours per visit — and two in a day is a comfortable maximum if you want to absorb what you taste rather than simply accumulate stamps.

Making appointments

Written contact in French, sent four to six weeks in advance, is the convention and is almost always better received than telephone calls or online contact forms. State clearly who you are, when you wish to visit, which wines you know and admire, and what you are hoping to learn. A genuine letter of this kind, rather than a form request, opens doors that remain closed to those who arrive unannounced.

A number of specialist agencies and guides based in Beaune can arrange a programme of visits for you, and this is often the most efficient approach for a first serious trip. They have existing relationships, know which domaines are currently welcoming visitors, and can advise on which producers at a given level of price and appellation are over-performing relative to their classification.

Producers worth knowing across the Côte

The following are not comprehensive recommendations — the field is too large and too subject to change for that — but a starting framework for orientation:

• Côte de Nuits reds: Rousseau, Dugat-Py, and Trapet in Gevrey; Dujac in Morey-Saint-Denis; Roumier and Mugnier in Chambolle; Méo-Camuzet and Gros Frère et Soeur in Vosne-Romanée.

• Côte de Beaune reds: Marquis d'Angerville and Michel Lafarge in Volnay; Comte Armand in Pommard.

• Côte de Beaune whites: Coche-Dury, Jobard and Roulot in Meursault; Leflaive in Puligny; Ramonet and Colin-Morey in Chassagne.

• Négociants: Louis Jadot and Bouchard Père et Fils have excellent visitor facilities in Beaune and offer a broad cross-section of appellations in a single visit — useful for orientation, if not for the discovery that a smaller domaine provides.

Eating and drinking

Burgundian cuisine

The cooking of Burgundy is built on the same principles as the wine: local, unhurried, and better than it looks on paper. Boeuf bourguignon, oeufs en meurette (poached eggs in a red wine sauce), jambon persillé, escargots de Bourgogne, coq au vin, époisses — the famous and slightly alarming washed-rind cheese — and the region's fine Charolais beef: these are the dishes that anchor the serious table here. Ordering them in a restaurant where the same producer's wine is served by the glass is one of the pleasures the region does better than anywhere.

Restaurants

Beaune has a number of very good tables. Le Benaton, Le Carmin, and Loiseau des Vignes are the most consistent at the serious end; Ma Cuisine, opposite the market, is a Burgundian institution of long standing, with a cellar that runs to genuinely extraordinary depth at honest prices. In Meursault, the Hôtel les Charmes has a reliable table; in Gevrey-Chambertin, Chez Guy has served the village's vignerons for decades.

Lyon, if your itinerary allows for it, adds another dimension: the bouchons (informal bistros serving Lyonnais charcuterie and offal-led cooking) are a counterpoint to Beaune's more refined register and are worth a half-day detour.

Buying wine to bring home

The rules on bringing wine back to the UK from France are permissive for personal use — there is no legal limit, though HMRC guidance suggests that quantities above 90 litres attract scrutiny and you may be asked to demonstrate the wine is for personal use rather than resale. The practical constraint is weight and breakage. Specialist wine carriers based in Beaune and Dijon can arrange professional packing and consolidated shipping, and this is often the most sensible approach for serious quantities. The wine merchant Athenaeum in Beaune also ships internationally and carries a wide range of domaine wines at honest prices.

When to go and how Expressions can help

Spring (April to June) is a quietly beautiful time on the Côte d'Or, with the vines in bud and the vineyards accessible, relatively few visitors, and domaines that have completed their winter work and are ready to receive guests. The wines from the previous vintage are often available for tasting in barrel, which is a particular pleasure.

Summer brings tourists, heat, and the complex business of viticulture — flowering, then the véraison when the grapes change colour — and the domaines are often very busy. Visits can feel more rushed, and availability at better hotels is tighter.

Harvest (vendange) runs approximately from late September to mid-October depending on the vintage. The vineyards are at their most beautiful and most animated, and the sense of occasion is high, but domaine visits are essentially impossible during picking — the staff are in the vines — and the roads are slow. The week or two after harvest, when the grapes are in the vats and the vignerons have a moment to breathe, can be a very good time to visit: the atmosphere is relaxed and the conversations are good.

November is the Hospices auction and Les Trois Glorieuses. Cold and possibly grey, but worth it.

A wine-focused trip to Burgundy rewards preparation, but the preparation itself should not become a burden. At Expressions Holidays, we have been organising tailor-made holidays to France since 1989, and Burgundy is one of the regions we know well — not just in terms of hotels and logistics, but in terms of the rhythm and character of a trip that works.

We can advise on which hotels suit which kind of traveller in which part of the Côte; arrange car hire from the most convenient gateway; and structure an itinerary that balances domaine visits with the time simply to walk a vineyard, sit in a village square, and eat well without rushing. For those who want introductions to producers, we work with trusted local contacts who can open doors that are not easily opened from a distance.

A Burgundy wine holiday can be planned around a long weekend or a fortnight, as a standalone trip or combined with Lyon, Paris, or the Rhône valley to the south. We are happy to discuss whatever configuration suits you best.

To begin planning, call us on 01392 441245 or visit expressionsholidays.co.uk/burgundy.