Clos de Vougeot

One of the pleasures of going to Wine country and visiting wineries is the chance it gives you to think to yourself, “Imagine if I owned this joint!”  A lesser pleasure among all those of wine tasting, but a pleasure nonetheless.  Nowhere in the world are such imaginings so fertile as in France and nowhere in France are they better than at the Clos de Vougeot in the Côte de Nuit of Burgundy.  Pronounce that Kloh de VOO-zhoh.

A clos is an enclosed field, or in this case and enclosed vineyard.  Yes, there’s a wall around it but the vineyard is enormous, the second largest of the grand cru vineyards in the Côte d’Or.  (Corton is larger.)  There is a hierarchy of vineyards and thus wines in Burgundy and grand cru is the highest level.  As beautiful as it may be, the reason to visit is not the vineyard but the building sitting in the middle of it.

clos-de-vougeotPhoto courtesy of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin

The chateau of Clos de Vougeot has a history, in fact quite a lot of it.  It was erected in the 12th century by Cistercian monks.  The name originates from the nearby abbey of Citeaux, which is the mother house of the Cistercian order (known as Trappists in the United States and elsewhere).  It was one of the most influential monasteries in medieval Christendom.  It was eventually abandoned, restored in the 19th century, damaged in World War II and once again restored after the war.  That latter task was carried out by the members of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, a definitely snobby club of rich and famous Frenchmen.  Today the Confrérie has, according to its web site, 12,000 members.  It’s still rich and snobby but no longer exclusively French.

You can visit the chateau and pretend you’re one of the 12,000.  It’s worth doing on its own merits, just to see a 12th century castle in the heart of a great vineyard.  You can do a self-guided tour and watch a film or you can be shown around by one of their guides.  Based on our experience, the guided tour is worthwhile.  The cellars and the formal rooms bring on that imaginary ownership mentioned above.

Perhaps the most exciting part of a visit is knowing that you are at the epicenter of Burgundy winemaking.  Sadly, the one thing you can’t do at Clos de Vougeot is taste wine.  That is, you can’t taste wine.  But every year in spring and fall they hold a “tastevinage”, a grand wine tasting with a jury of 250 of the finest connoisseurs that can be assembled.  They’re famous wine-growers, great merchants, heads of viticultural unions, wine-brokers, oenologists, government officials from the government’s wine office, restaurant owners, enlightened amateurs.  Maybe you’re one of them, otherwise you’re not going.  Out of the tastevinage comes a seal of approval, the emblem of the Confrérie des Chevaliers des Tastevin that the selected winery can put on its bottles.

By the way, what is a tastevin?  It’s a wide, flat cup that sommeliers use to slurp a little bit of well-aerated wine before serving it to you.  Or at least sommeliers used to do that (maybe some still do) in restaurants that had sommeliers.  If you take the guided tour, they give you one.

tastevin

Photo courtesy of Amazon.com

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *