Vines in the Auxois Hills Once Again

We had a white wine from Viserny last week. Thats Viserny there in the photo. Its just down the road
from where we live. And you would never guess but its the most important wine village in the area. The
wine we tasted was a well-made-home-made inscrutable, and enough of a curiosity that we wanted to
meet the person who made it. So we got an introduction and went to see Raymond Berthier whose
farmyard is in the center of the village.

We live in the heart of Burgundy on high ground known as the Auxois. Its the French continental divide,
so rivers flow off from here to the Med, to the Atlantic or the North Sea. For this, Burgundy has always
been an area of passage, and the Auxois one of the few places around where you could keep your feet
dry. If all roads led to Rome, one of them came right through here. And if youll allow me to cram two
millennia into one phrase, this goes a long way to explaining wine production in Burgundy though
maybe not wine production as you know it: a lot can change in a millennium.
Theres more to wines than the great wines of Burgundy. Many of the worlds most famous vineyards
are to the east of here on a strip of crumbling cliff that runs above the Sane river valley from Dijon
down to Macon. They call it the golden hillside, the Cte dOr, and it is special. To the west theres
Chablis, and Chablis too is special. But rewind 150 years to a time when commerce for wine was driven
by quantity, not quality. Those famous few vineyards were known and prized, but wine for the most part
was made by farmers for whom viticulture was just part of a bigger job. Poly-culture was prevalent all
across Burgundy, with farmers raising cattle, growing wheat, tending orchards and also vines. Because
wine-making was not a full-time occupation, not all farmers were good winemakers, and not all wine
was good. But the decent stuff made its way to market via a new canal system that was navigable from
Dijon to Paris and beyond.

Which brings us back to Viserny? Here in the Auxois we have good south-facing limestone slopes, rich
river-bottom pastures and expanses of fertile plateau, all within easy reach of the Burgundy Canal.
Perfect farm country, always has been, with more cows than people. But 150 years ago, the Auxois also
did a booming business supplying table wine to the cafes of Paris. Some of the production was as highly
considered as Chablis. But the world changed overnight when the phylloxera epidemic swept across
Europe at the end of the 19th century and laid waste to vineyards great and small indiscriminately. The
wine trade died. When the panic subsided and a solution to the problem was found, grapes were
replanted bit by bit, with those famous few vineyards logically the first. But when Paris started thinking
of bulk table Bourgogne Wines again, another world changer put the Auxois out of business. A new
railroad linked the sunny south with the capital. And the sunny south could make an ocean of
consistently ripe cheap wine. It took the Cte dOr and Chablis nearly 50 years to get back to their feet.
In fact, until the mid-60s lots of classified vineyard land was either planted in cereal or lay fallow, and
could be had for a relative pittance. The lesser appellations were the last to come back to production,
and the table wine regions never really did. Political push has helped several outlying zones rise from the
ashes, but the wine of the Auxois all but died.
Raymond Berthier is retired now, and after a broken leg in 2005 was not able to keep up with the
several acres of vines that he had tended all his life on the slopes above Viserny. His son-in-law kept a
small patch, but the rest has been ripped up. The wine we tasted was from 2003 or 2004 he guessed, he
wasnt sure. A blend of Alighted and Melon. He is proud of it, and described perfect traditional winemaking methods that explained how a simple hand-made white wine could be so crisp and clear seven
years on. But hes pushing 80, and he and his wine making neighbors find that they have no one to
continue their part of the tradition. Various reasons: people move away or only have weekends to tend
the vines or just dont care for the work. Whatever. The fact is that once upon a time this valley was
rimmed with vines, and now need a sharp eye to see the vestiges.
Know more about Burgundy Wine Region.
But real traditions die hard. In the mid-70s a small group of local winemakers built a dossier and raised
enough money to start a serious winery. Since the early 90s the group has been planting and tending
Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Auxerrois and Pinot Gris, the traditional grapes of the Auxois. By the end of the
decade, there were 24 acres (10 ha.) producing vin de pays under the name Domaine de VillainesViserny . This year they were awarded an IGP and can now call the wines Vin de Pays des Coteaux de
lAuxois. Its a big deal. Its determination. And it has required local support from business and
concerned investors. But the Grand cru wines is good, the press is good, and a little green shoot from a
once-vital wine region has been saved and is being nurtured here in our valley.