A Regional Appellation Apart
Bourgogne Passe-tout-grains is a regional appellation: like generic bourgogne, it can be produced in the Yonne, the Côte-d'Or, Saône-et-Loire and the Rhône. It exists in red and in rosé. But it holds a singular place in the Burgundian hierarchy, because it is the only one to give gamay equal standing with pinot noir, in a region that spent a century keeping the two apart.
Its area is modest: the BIVB counts about 695 hectares in production, for close to 44,980 hectolitres. On the scale of a Burgundian vineyard measured in tens of thousands of hectares, that is a niche — and a niche that shrank a great deal over the 20th century, as growers pulled up gamay in favour of better-paid pinot noir.
The Soils: Where Gamay Still Feels at Home
The appellation has no terroir of its own: it is superimposed on the regional bourgogne area. It is therefore found on Burgundy's classic clay-limestone soils — Jurassic marls and limestones of the Mâconnais, the Côte chalonnaise, the Hautes Côtes and the Auxerrois — but also on ground that the great appellations disdain: siliceous, clayey or sandy zones, which suit passe-tout-grains well.
This flexibility of soil is no small matter. On pure limestone, gamay gives hard, angular wines; it does better on lighter, slightly acidic soils. Pinot noir, for its part, demands limestone. A good passe-tout-grains therefore requires a grower able to reconcile two opposing needs on the same estate — something the appellation rules effectively impose, since compliance of the planting is assessed across all of the holding's parcels producing the appellation.
The Proportions: A Rule That Has Changed
This is the technical point worth knowing, because most older books give a rule that no longer applies. The current specification requires the share of pinot noir to exceed 30% and that of gamay to exceed 15%, both in the estate's plantings and in the blend; both varieties must be present. The secondary varieties — chardonnay, pinot blanc and pinot gris — are admitted only as vines interplanted in the vineyard, and capped at 15% per parcel.
Before the overhaul of the specifications begun in 2009, the rule was stricter: pinot noir had to make up at least a third of the blend, and gamay no more than two-thirds. That one-third figure dated from 1947; it had itself replaced still lower thresholds, 20% and then 25% pinot noir in the appellation's earliest years. The move to a floor of 30% for pinot and 15% for gamay has above all freed growers: it is now possible to make a passe-tout-grains largely dominated by pinot noir, and many do.
The Growers' Wine: A History of Disdain
For generations, passe-tout-grains was the house wine. The one drawn from the barrel for family meals, for the pickers, for the mid-morning break; the one that never went on the list and was never shown to the brokers. Its reputation was that of a rustic wine made from the grapes nobody had managed to sell, and its very name — passe-tout-grains — sounded like an admission of slapdash winemaking.
That disdain has a political root. Since the court rulings of the interwar years and the decrees of 1937, the name "bourgogne" has been reserved for wines of pinot noir and chardonnay; gamay was sent off to passe-tout-grains and to "bourgogne grand ordinaire", since renamed coteaux bourguignons. Passe-tout-grains was thus born on the declassified side of the border, and it carried the stigma for a long time.
The Style of the Wines and the Reappraisal Under Way
In the glass, passe-tout-grains is a light, fruity red, flowing and direct, with no pretension to cellaring: it is best enjoyed within two or three years, served cool, between 11 and 13°C. It goes with exactly the cooking it came from — œufs en meurette, jambon persillé, charcuterie, grills, young cheeses. Gamay gives it the crunch and the drinkability, pinot noir the finesse and a little backbone.
It is precisely that profile that has earned it renewed interest today. At a time when red Burgundy prices have soared and public taste is moving towards lighter, more digestible wines, often whole-bunch fermented and lightly oaked, the pinot-gamay blend no longer looks like a makeshift but like a clever idea. Several respected estates in the Côte de Nuits and the Côte chalonnaise have brought their passe-tout-grains cuvée back out of the cellar — and now sell it under their own name, which they would not have done thirty years ago.