Côte-Rôtie’s conundrum: Could a Burgundy-style cru system ever work?

If you want to deepen your understanding of a region or appellation nothing beats visiting in person.

But certain vineyards are more stubbornly inscrutable than others. I’ve been visiting Côte-Rôtie for years, yet every time I go there I learn something new.

On paper, it’s a southeast-facing hillside. In reality, it’s a succession of crumpled, corrugated slopes that are so mangled that vineyards can face in almost any direction.

What’s more, the appellation extends across three villages – it takes two hours to walk from one end to the other.

With 343ha of vines divided into 73 lieux-dits, there’s one thing that would make the vineyards of Côte-Rôtie much easier to understand – a classification or ‘cru’ system.

If it exists in Burgundy, then why not here?

Missed opportunities

It’s not a new idea. Marcel Guigal says some producers were using the term ‘premier cru’ in Côte-Rôtie until well after phylloxera. But the term was used liberally throughout France until the appellation d'origine contrôlée system instilled some order.

In the early 1980s, the idea of an official vineyard classification started to gain traction once more.

In 1983, Guigal says that growers voted on the measure – but with three quarters against the motion, it didn’t pass.

‘It was a big mistake,’ says Guigal. Back then, bottle prices were much lower, despite the same high cost of production, and validating vineyards via a cru system could have helped producers increase their prices.

But the idea refused to die. Stéphane Ogier says that not long after he joined the family estate in 1997, ‘the idea was on the table,’ and growers were talking about a possible classification once again. But they failed to achieve a consensus.

One sticking point was this: who has the knowledge and authority to draw up the plans? Finding someone with the necessary level of expertise – but with no skin in the game – proved intractable.

Possible grands crus

I asked Ogier if he could hypothetically draw up such a map. He said he would focus on the original heart of the appellation above the village of Ampuis: from (lieux-dits) Le Combard to Côte Blonde, then from Côte Brune to La Landonne and Côte Rozier, with the middle of the slope designated grand cru and the top of the slope premier cru.

I don’t think many local vignerons would find this suggestion overly controversial.

Then, further north, La Viallière, Les Grands Places and Montmain ‘could be very good premiers crus,’ says Ogier. I’ve no doubt there are others that would class the first two as grand cru.

Looking further south, Maison Rouge and Coteau de Tupin would have their advocates too, at least to premier cru level.

Ogier adds that this preliminary suggestion amounts to broad brush strokes, and that any final classification might end up more like a mosaic of premier and grand cru sites.

Patrick Jasmin has a more poetic suggestion: ‘When it snows, the first places for it to melt, those are the best sites.’

For him, these include lieux-dits Le Mollard, Côte Blonde, Fongeant, Côte Brune, Côte Bodin, Les Moutonnes, Rochains, La Landonne, La Viallière and Les Grands Places.

Sticking points

The further Ogier develops his idea, the more detailed the hypothetical map becomes.

Cognet, for example, would be designated a premier cru on the slope, but not at the foot of the hill where the soil is deeper.

Similarly, Lancement would be a premier cru at the top of the slope, then grand cru towards the middle.

This is where the problem lies. The climats of Burgundy were established around subtle differences in terroir and resulting wine style; whereas the lieu-dit boundaries of Côte-Rôtie follow roads, old estate boundaries and other geographical features.

In the words of Pierre Burgaud, in Côte-Rôtie ‘a lieu-dit does not necessarily correspond to a homogenous unit of terroir,’ as it can contain various soil types, soil depths and exposures.

For a reliable, consistent cru system, an entirely original map would need to be created. And this would create endless arguments among growers and a lot of bad feeling.

‘It would be war!’ says David Duclaux.

But what about renowned vineyards such as La Landonne – surely this would be a grand cru?

Jean-Paul Jamet vinifies his parcel of this vineyard by itself every year but only bottles it separately very rarely, as it can be simply too austere if unblended.

If the greatest grands crus don’t always produce balanced and complete wines by themselves, surely this undermines the idea to some extent?

Maintaining course

Single-vineyard wines are nonetheless increasingly common. But some producers, such as Burgaud, intentionally produce just one Côte-Rôtie, blending together all their parcels.

‘Historically, Côte-Rôtie is an appellation based on blending,’ he says, ‘blending allows me to achieve greater consistency, preserve the wine's complexity and maintain a high level of quality regardless of vintage conditions’.

And a classification system could lead to a proliferation of single-vineyard micro-cuvées, which in reality could make the situation more complex, not clearer.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that Duclaux and Guigal, the appellation’s current co-presidents, state there is currently no intention to establish a cru system in Côte-Rôtie.

I’m actually quite pleased. Without this shortcut to understanding the vineyards, I’ll have to keep going back to this beautiful place.

And a lack of a cru system forces us to focus on the estate, rather than the vineyard – which tends to be a better guide, no matter the region.

In the meantime, if you see any of the lieux-dits named above on your bottle, you can take that as a very good sign.

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