A Tractor In The Vineyard

My second day in Burgundy would consist of visits to wineries that focus primarily on white wines. The first stop was at Guy Bocard in Meursault, and while the language barrier had been an obstacle of varying degrees throughout my trip, this was the first time where the person I was with spoke no English at all. Fortunately, after almost a week in France and several visits under my belt I was able to at least have a pretty good degree of communication with lots of pointing, gesturing, nodding, and grammatically incorrect questions.

When I met Guy he was badly hobbled and walking with a cane, the result of either a hip-replacement or a broken femur (I believe). While he may not have been as sprightly as he normally is, it did nothing to throw off his charming demeanor. Together we went into a small office where he pulled out several of his wines for some bottle tasting, and then we went over to his barrel room where he offered me several different samples and even had me climb up over some of the barrels he couldn’t reach.

Bocard’s wines have always been a personal favorite. Right now the best $20 bottle of Chardonnay in my store, and probably the best $20 white wine period, is his regular Bourgogne Blanc, which carries the word Chardonnay on the label. Even his lowest offering, the Bourgogne Blanc, is made entirely of grapes from the Meursault commune, although some of the vines are not within the appellation proper. When I think of Meursault his style of wine is what comes to mind.

The wines are certainly full-bodied and Bocard keeps his wines in barrel for an extended amount of time. Additionally, he avoids stirring the lees. The result is a high level of character and body, but there is little oak present. During our barrel tasting he would repeatedly spit out a wine, tap the barrel he had taken it out of, point at the wood, and shake his head. It was clear that he wanted rich wines that did not show any oak flavors. Meursault is indeed an odd beast as it shows more mineral and less fruit than most Chardonnay. To balance that minerality you need to have a good, rich body and texture, but mineral and oak is normally a really bad flavor combination, especially without fruit.

Bocard’s method of dealing with this is to use a very long, very gentle malolactic fermentation to give the wine fullness without killing the signature of the wine. His wines are also bottled much later than most, so there is a certain relaxed element to them. As I said, his regular Bourgogne Blanc is an outstanding buy. a great expression of white Burgundy, and in reality a poor man’s Meursault.

With the exception of a Aligote, all of Bocard’s other white wines carry the Meursault designation. There is a “Meursault Vieilles Vignes” (Old Vines Meursault), three single vineyard wines, and two vineyard specific Premier Cru wines. All of the wines display the hefty Meursault style. As I’ve said over and over again, the real signature of Meursault is richness. But more than just that, the wines should also have a nutty element to them and a creaminess that doesn’t feel forced upon the wine. What separates Bocard’s upper-end bottlings is the beauty of that creaminess and the way they retain a surprisingly lively level of acids. His Premier Cru “Les Charmes” is amazing, with rich flavors of butter and soft nuts along with a firm, powerful backbone of minerality and acids. There are no Grand Crus in Meursault, but a handful of the Premier Cru vineyards stand above the others. “Les Charmes” is one of those vineyards.

After the tasting we hopped into Bocard’s van and headed out to drive through some vineyards. We took a winding route that curved up along the sloping hills of the Cote de Beaune. We went through a few of the lesser-known villages, and along the way he pointed out to me not only where the appellation boundaries are but also where the vineyards change. Due to the language barrier there wasn’t a lot of information going back and forth, but there was plenty to learn anyway. Just by pointing and saying the names of the vineyards and where their boundaries were Bocard was able to show me quite a bit.

What makes Burgundy special is the rock composition that sits below each vineyard, which effects the drainage (and thereby how deep the roots go) and the nutrients each vine receives. Those twisting roads and paths that cut through vineyards throughout Burgundy are not just haphazard and random; they were put where they were long ago, in some cases centuries ago, because each side of the road had its own distinct characteristics. It is amazing to stand in between two different vineyards and actually be able to see the differences between the two. Someday I hope I can understand exactly how those qualities are expressed in the wines.

As wonderful as the visit was, there was one moment where I really wished we could have been able to speak a bit more. As we driving through vineyards we pulled to the side of the road at one point and stopped. Bocard starred intently into a vineyard, where not too far from us a tractor was going up and down the rows. We sat there for a minute or two, and I finally tried to ask Bocard what he was looking at. Through some broken English, broken French, and some gesturing he finally expressed to me that this was one of his vineyards, and man we were watching was someone he had hired because he couldn’t work the vineyards with his leg injury.

Our view to the tractor was clear, but we were a good 150 yards away (at least) and there was no way to see exactly what he was doing. At least there was no way for me to tell what he was doing. But Bocard clearly could see something, and he was quite focused for a couple of minutes. It was very enlightening to be reminded that even right there, in a car on the side of the road looking out a tractor that was only slowly moving through the vineyards there were numerous things a farmer who had worked that field for several decades could see, and if we had actually walked out and watched the tractor up close I wonder how many more he could have seen. It was a very good reminder of just how hard it is to make great wine and how fine an art it really is.