New signs are on their way for the UNESCO World Heritage climats and sites of Burgundy… here the Château du Clos de Vougeot…

• The weather of last week – i.e. the -12°C – was seemingly insufficient the freeze the opened bottles of wine that stood outside my kitchen window. Still, that was one chilly drop of wine…
• Talking of the weather – my long-weekend visit to the Côtes was called off – more due to ice rain than the snow – so despite the all-round prowess of the scooby, it was to be a weekend at home, rescheduling some domaine visits.
• Typing my visit to Franck Large of Domaine du Breuil in Salles-Arbuissonnas-en-Beaujolais. Franck noted that from 2017 he can include the name of his village on his Beaujolais Villages label. I told him that the name of his village isn’t easy for an English speaker to say – Franck joked ‘It’s not easy for the French either!‘
• It was a short-term laugh, but following Google’s update to it’s search engine ‘to make it harder for people to buy guns(?)’ we also lost for a while the ability to buy bur-gun-dy. They fixed it in a couple of days, but it took longer still to recover the back-catalogue of the Sex Pistols!
• Light afternoon reading… silver-tongues-ray-walker-hong-kong-and-the-rules-of-the-game/

Three things have caught my eye in the last days:

1. “My father favours wines that are big, tannic and my direction is the opposite” – Erwan Faiveley
2. “Aubert de Villaine, co-owner of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti has said the 2015 vintage ranks as perhaps the most remarkable of his half a century long career” which makes an interesting counterpoint to some of his words when I tasted at the domaine in December 2016. But ‘remarkable’ is not automatically the same as ‘great’ – eh? – link
3. Finally: In association with the work for ‘Climats / UNESCO World Heritage’ there is finally news that the signatures are in place for the project to build “Cité des Vins dedicated to the region’s wines and Climats.” The local representatives look happy in the picture above, courtesy the BIVB. The plan is to build close to the centre of Beaune, the Cité to be constructed near the Palais des Congrès, part of a 10-hectare complex including a five-star hotel, two restaurants, a shopping mall and reception centre. The plan is “to create the entertaining, educational, and cultural structures this project represents.”
   The plan is that this should be opening to the public in early 2021 and represents an investment of €16.6 million coming from Chablis, Mâcon and roughly two-thirds of the cash from Beaune. I honestly see this project, at a time of unsustainable wine pricing, having the potential to be a huge, not to mention expensive, white elephant. But I will be very, very happy to be proved an old pessimist 🙂

Starting with a cutting reportage – but no hatchet job – I know producers that haven’t been paid for their wine:

• Here.
• A history of OW Loeb
• How do you use whole clusters(?)

I don’t find that many things to alert you to read, but it seems that publications have been saving things up – so here you go, 3 things in one day!

• Why Burgundy is the hottest property in fine wine terms
• Interview with Frederic Drouhin
• Bourgogne Côte d’Or – Death by Boredom? (I’m with Christine Parkinson)