I. If Burgundy was a sculpture, it would be a creation of Richard Serra. You might know Serra as a builder of huge, iron 
sculptures, pieces so heavy, so massive in scale they seem almost threatening. When you encounter a Serra you marvel at its shape, they way it moves, undulates, curves gently; but it’s so massive that you end up doing some curving of your own, giving in to its form. A Serra sculpture isn’t something you so much look at but interact with. It changes your physicality, the way you inhabit your body.
Burgundy’s vineyards exist in similarly undulating hillsides. The Cote d’Or slopes, taken together, form the gentlest of S’s, running from Dijon to Chagny. It has unbelievable gravity, but appears to move or spill in places that make your own equilibrium seem a little off-kilter.
You may experience a similar gentle undulation when you taste a great Burgundy. There is such a presence to a great wine it can feel, in its way, massive, commanding, it can stop you in your tracks. It seems at first that you can go in only one direction with it. But when you give over to it, it rewards your suppleness. It opens, it changes direction, it reveals itself. It allows you to get closer, and you have to be there, to take the step.
II. Flavors, Take One:
“So alive. Scents of golden apple with raisin, savory caramel notes, dusted with white earth. Such depth on the palate, so much going on, layers of lemon curd, vanillin, fig, apple, burnt sugar, with a beautiful depth and unbelievable length, a fine, impacted minerality that grounds the wine and gives it some lift. Extraordinary.”
—Corton Charlemagne, Bonneau de Martray, 1990, from magnum.
III. If for some reason you believe that Burgundy wines are Platonic, ethereal, perpetually out of reach, try to get yourself invited to a Banée. It’s known as a mini-Paulée, and when you attend it’s clear that celebrations like this have been going on in Burgundy since the time of the Dukes. They are ancient, rooted in tradition, and so clearly designed to maximize inebriation that any dignity the place might have earned in its thousand-year history is mercifully lost for a single intoxicated evening.
I was lucky enough to attend one at the Chateau de Meursault. The idea was for most guests to bring bottles of wine to share, usually magnums. So many great wines passed through my lips that evening, none of them spit, that I stopped taking notes at wine 45. There was a multi-course meal of inspired Burgundian creations. There were wines finding their way into my glass that I couldn’t believe I was tasting, poured with warmth and congeniality by perfect strangers.
On many occasions they wouldn’t even greet me, something of a faux pas in France. But I forgave them–they were too busy singing. I believe I was the only guest among the 450 attending that wasn’t singing at the top of his or her lungs, and it seemed as if every native Burgundian had learned these songs in childhood.
It was the purest revelry. And ever conscious of their new laws, the hosts provided each guest with a plastic ‘ethylotest,’ so you could test yourself to see if you were under the legal limit. Few were. There were many, many taxis on hand that evening.
IV. One of my favorite hills in Burgundy–my favorite tilt on the Serra sculpture–is not in the Cote d’Or at all, but well south in the Cote Chalonnaise, in Mercurey. It is this spot on the ridge above the village where the vines appear to come spilling over the hill 
and directly into the streets with the urgency and speed of a flood. And in a sense that’s what it is, or was: I’m fairly certain that you’re looking at a glacial saddle, a place where ice carved a unique swale into the landscape, and vines, naturally, followed. I can’t tell you for sure if the wines from Domaine de Suremain, just across the street from this formation, are in any way informed by the geographical drama that this site bears, but there’s no question I think of that place when I taste their very delicate, very mineral wines.
V. By contrast, some of the greatest vineyards in the Cote d’Or 
are the most ordinary in appearance. Like the wines themselves, they seem to exist in an almost perfect state of equipoise on the hills they inhabit, between the dramatic high altitude sites that yield wines of a cool austerity but can seem diffident and heady, and vineyards that are too low on the hill and languish in thick, dull soils. That leaves the middle, to create the extraordinary out of the mundane. That is where La Tache lies. And La Grande Rue. And Romanee Conti.
VI. Flavors, Take Two:
“Glorious balance. So poised. Leads with tar and herbs and dark, baking spice fruits, flecks of iron, pink pepper, roses, blood. Palate is generous and juicy, clean cherry fruit but it’s really all about savory flavors, brown spices, rose tea, tobacco. Structure firm but lacy. It doesn’t stop.”
—Corton Clos du Roi, Domaine de Montille, 2006.
VII. Traveling to Burgundy from California in spring and experiencing firsthand the crap weather they must endure year round is something of a revelation. To call what California gets “weather,” compared with what happens in central to northern France, is kind of a joke. Weather is such a vivid and mercurial presence here, changing daily, hourly, with rainstorms that make the ones in my home state seem so timely and orderly, like trains coming into and leaving a station. The storms in Burgundy are massive, vicious, unyielding. (I know, it’s not like I’m telling you all from New York or New England or Chicago anything you don’t already know, but hey, the world’s greatest wines aren’t grown in your backyards now, are they?) For every grower in Burgundy the weather is a daily anxiety, and it fills me with a new kind of wonder.
VIII. Chablis for example. Chablis is profoundly, idiotically cold. In March. Barren. Ridiculous how cold. I want to know which mad monk in the Dark Ages unwrapped his face in one of their cataclysmic windstorms and, as several layers of his cheeks 
peeled away, said, “I think we should plant vines here.” I’ve lived in California for the last 15 years and while I’m sure that qualifies me as a weather weenie, I was astounded that anyone would want to plant anything in these conditions. Even the vines on the cru vineyards, stretching from the woodland top of a great Kimmeridgian face, seemed stunted by the severity of the weather.
IX. Flavors, Take Three:
“Exquisite, so clear and limpid. Aromas of lime, pear, oyster shell. Sensuous attack, marvelously rich middle palate of golden apple, pear, light herbs, minerals. Finish is unbelievably long and poised, with an elegance that’s not deserving in a wine so young.”
—Chablis Grand Cru Les Clos, Domaine Louis Moreau, 2006
X. I believe that most of the world’s crows live in the Cote d’Or. I’m not sure what to make of this information, but it makes me uneasy.