Welcome to another instalment of ‘these are all the Burgundies I’ve tasted recently’, a collection of indulgent tasting highlights from the Grand Jours de Bourgogne 2026 (a week-long Burgundian wine fair in early March). So far in this series, I’ve looked at how much Chablis I can taste in one session, been bedazzled by a smorgasbord of Vosne mega-wines, tasted many mercurial Mâconnais whites, and worked through a challenging lineup from the Côte de Nuits.

Of all the sessions in this Burgundian adventure, there was one lineup that felt like Burgundy Pleasuretown. Or at least, that was the persistent vibe I got wandering around the Pommard & Volnay hall…

I’ve never flown first class. There is no turning left for wine scribes. But even if I had the dollars, I don’t think I could ever justify going all in. Business class? Yes yes. The full suite luxury experience? A colossal waste.

The same can be said for wine. So often, the Grand Cru wines, the unicorns and icons, are just not worth spending twice as much as their peers. And especially so in Burgundy, when mere metres between vineyards separate wines that cost $100 from those that cost $1,000.

I’m not saying don’t go long on the great stuff. Rare Rutherglen Muscat is probs worth more than double that of Classic. Also, don’t let me start another long-winded explanation about value systems. But I’d still rather comfort and deliciousness rather than luxury every day of the week.

In a tangential way, that brings us to today’s focus tasting – a lineup of red (and some white) wines from the Côte de Beaune (the hill at the southern end of the Burgundy’s fabled Côte d’Or escarpment), led by an extra delicious selection of 2023 Pommard & Volnay wines.

Obvious.ly classing these Burgundian red wines somehow more affordable is a misnomer – we’re still in fancy wine land, with the prices to match. Yet when compared to some of the even fancier wines from the northern end of the Côte d’Or (places like Vosne-Romanée, Gevrey-Chambertin or Nuits-Saint-Georges), we’re more often in business rather than first class for pricing.

Of course, super confusingly, the Côte de Beaune also has some of the most expensive white wines on the planet (from appellations centred on the villages of Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet), and we’ll cover those off in a separate post (eventually). For now, though, I want to talk about why I like the wines of Volnay (and to a marginally lesser extent, Pommard) first.

It’s all about fruit. The 2023 reds from these pretty neighbouring French wine villages are so often pretty wines that feel generous. My tasting notes are a mudbath of red fruit, with words like round and luscious like a well-worn cliche. Even Pommard, which has more clay- and ironstone-rich soils than Volnay’s steeper, limestone-dominant plots and typically produces more muscular wines, delivered plushness this vintage.

Beyond the Pommard/Volnay nexus, you’ll also see a selection below of wines from the broader Côte de Beaune that shifts from the welcome mat to a bit more of a journey in the backyard. You’ll find proper establishment wines in that selection, complemented by a few wines from the quite exciting, climate-buffering fringe of the Hautes-Côtes.

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Rarely have I been so glad to hear an Aussie accent.

There I was on day 2 of last month’s Grand Jours de Bourgogne 2026, feeling a little bogged down.

It wasn’t meant to be this way. I’d spent the morning at the Most exalted end of the Burgundian pyramid, knee deep in the fineries of Clos de Vogueot and Vosne fancy wine. I’d climbed to the highest peak of Pinot Noir on this planet. And to follow, I had the supreme promise of two big tastings devoted to the broader Côte de Nuits, featuring wines from famed French appellations like Gevrey-Chambertin, Bonnes Mares, Morey-Saint-Denis. It was going to be great!

Yet as soon as I wandered into the expansive Gevrey-Chambertin tasting hall, it immediately seemed like harder work.

What had happened? Was it the wines, or was it me? Maybe the frustration of the Taupenot-Merme pourer who desperately didn’t want to be there. Or the Russians who tried to steal my hard-won lunch spot? Why was I not feeling these wines?

And then I ran into Mark Haism.

The post Doing the hard work in the Côte de Nuits (and saved by a bogan Aussie) appeared first on Australian Wine and Drinks Review.

French wine tastes better in a château. Sure, I’m being glib, but you try not to feel the gravitas when you’re lining up for a tasting of storied Pinot Noir inside the 12th-century walls of Burgundy’s Château du Clos de Vougeot.

And day 2 of the just-completed 2026 Grand Jours de Bourgogne started with the big guns, kicking off with an all-too-brief dive into the heroes of Vosne, featuring storied Burgundian appellations like Clos de Vogueot, Vosne-Romanée, Echézeaux, Richebourg, etc.

We’re playing in the very deepest end of Pinot to start the day…

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I’m a long way from a professional cricketer, but as I walked into the makeshift tasting area at the Le Kimmérdgien function centre in Chablis last Monday, it felt like the wine equivalent of walking out on the SCG turf for day one of the Sydney test.

Game on.

The sun was shining, the jetlag put on hold, and the teeth tooth-moussed. This was Day 1 of the Grand Jours de Bourgogne, a biannual, week-long wine industry tastefest that traverses the hills of Burgundy from Auxerre to the Mâconnais and everywhere in between. And before me, in a marquee packed with thirsty importateurs and cavistes, there were over 150 producers from Chablis, Irancy, Saint-Bris and an assortment of appellations from the north end of Burgundy.

G’day, let’s taste some wines.

The challenge, as I pointed out in this post last week, was just where to start. To my right, there was a huddle around the Domaine William Fevre table. To my left, another huddle around the wines of Samuel Billaud. So the question was, just how much of this Burgundy can I taste (and actually remember) in one day?

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It was a pinch-me moment.

Yesterday, as I stood in a quiet, regal, artwork-lined room on the first floor of the Château du Clos de Vougeot, I had one of those rare realisations that life is indeed very good.

It’s not hard to feel enthusiastic when you have a lineup of thirteen 2016 vintage Clos Vougeot wines in front of you. Great red Burgundy will do that. But I kept thinking (and not thinking too loudly, this room felt hallowed) that the starry-eyed, fresh-to-the-wine-industry Andrew of the year 2000 would have never ever dreamed that I’d be at this point.

And all this week, I get to do variations of this Burgundian dream over and over again (just with different flavours)…

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About fifteen years ago, a good mate of mine came into a stash of iconic wine. It was an odd situation, where he was given the run of a top-end heavy cellar as thanks for houseminding a trophy home on Sydney’s lower north shore. As you do. Naturally, he shared the wealth, which meant every time I popped around, we would wander into the custom-designed cellar and open something epic – old Chateau Montrose, Cheval Blanc, and most notably a few bottles of the 2005 release of Vega Sicilia Único Reserva Especial.

The last one cut differently.

I’d read about Vega Sicilia’s multi-vintage Ribera del Duero unicorn, but had little concept of just how much I’d be entranced by a true Spanish unicorn. I can still taste that wine and for years after, the wines of Vega Sicilia have occupied that little patch of space in my nerd brain that thinks of each country’s icon wines (fun fact – I’m such a wine nerd that I send myself to sleep trying to think of grapes that start with every letter of the alphabet. Q is impossible).

Yet more recently, I think I’ve slipped out of the Sicilia reverential universe. Call it exposure, call it a few alcoholic disappointments, but my Tempranillo benchmark shifted from those Ribera del Duero expressions and into the welcoming bosom of Rioja.

So it was that, when I found myself in Ribera del Duero after the Barcelona Wine Week (and the day after my Rueda expedition), I wasn’t quite sure where my preferences would land. As you can imagine, at a Spanish wine fair, I’d spent most of the week ingesting Tempranillo, and what felt like a shedload of Rioja, so I felt conditioned. But holy moley did I find myself back in love with Ribera del Duero real fast…

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Some wine regions feel special. Places where lush vines should thrive naturally (like the rolling hills of Burgundy) or where it’s ridiculous that vines grow there at all, let alone flourish (like the sand of the Barossa Valley floor).

Yet Rueda, Spain’s Verdejo ground zero, didn’t seem special. Rolling hills but set on a flattish plain (but ringed by mountains), with gravel, sand and limestone soils dotted by uniformly stumpy vines, it felt more like winegrowing in the desert. Which is about right, given this is a hard place – the wind whips straight across the largely treeless plains, with weather that varies between cold and windswept to hot and desiccated, the high altitude (vines here sit between 700-920m asl) only upping the continental contrasts, with big summer diurnal temps to match. There wasn’t even any grass growing between the rows, just hard looking dirt- you can understand locals talking about having ‘9 months of winter and 3 months of hell’.

But that ‘vineyard on the edge’ feel is exactly what makes for great wine. A ‘pressure makes diamonds’ viticulture ethos where vines struggle, and deliver wines that feel unique. And my very brief trip to this part of NW Spain in early Feb delivered plenty of extra fresh wines to bang this home.

It was a rude shock post-Barcelona Wine Week, though (where it was cool yet the weather was pretty nice). I expected cold and rain, but not puffer jackets inside stuff with sideways wind. Over four long days exploring vineyards of Castilla y León, covering Rueda, Toro, and Ribera del Duero, the sideways rain barely stopped for more than an hour or so.

This isn’t the Spain I was signing up for.

Yet still, what adventure! What was even more satisfying about this tour was that I had minimal exposure to the brands and labels, so I carried no expectations or pricing context. It’s absolutely refreshing to taste wines, work out what I liked and then work out how much they cost (and the label acclaim) later, just to remind that quality and price aren’t inextricably linked.

Verdejo from this part of the world lobs up plenty of surprises, too. Most of the wines I’ve had that landed here in Australia were quite simple, with a fruit profile that leans towards a little passionfruit and a grassy guava fruit salad flourish, before a typically tart, bitter lemon finish. Heck, there’s still a history of bulk wines here that doesn’t go away, with bag in box Rueda Verdejo cheap and readily available (with organic options) to remind of the scale.

But the best Verdejo, especially the Gran Vino de Rueda wines (which come from old vines, low yields and low extraction), can be incredibly detailed, layered, ultra-refreshing, lemony, subtly juicy and often piney and herbal whites of great length that are closer to Albariño, Austrian Grüner Veltliner or even Chablis.

The post Rueda – a very brief (but quality) Verdejo dive appeared first on Australian Wine and Drinks Review.

Spain = good value Tempranillo.

Just as Australia gets typecast as the land of Shiraz and big reds, Spain suffers the same fate, often consigned as the country of budget Tempranillo/Garnacha and cheap bottle-fermented sparkling (Cava).

Admittedly, I did taste a shedload lot of affordable Tempranillo in Spain for Barcelona Wine Week (BWW) last week. But there was also an ocean of greatness that felt a long way from cheap and cheerful Temp, spanning everything from superb Canary Islands orange wines to a profound Spanish vin cotto from the outskirts of Barcelona.

Spain is great.

Of course, I barely scratched the surface of what was on offer at BWW, with two halls and 1300 producers making what is Spain’s largest wine fair a challenge to do any justice (even if this fair is much smaller than Vinitaly or Wine Paris). I could have spent a week just tasting Cava and Tempranillo while barely scratching the surface.

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