The High Belt of the Corton Hill
Corton-Charlemagne is not a parcel but a crown. The appellation runs along the upper part of the Corton hill, just below the Bois de Corton that occupies its summit, and extends across three communes of the Côte-d'Or: Aloxe-Corton, Ladoix-Serrigny and Pernand-Vergelesses. It describes an arc of about 270 degrees of exposure, from the lieux-dits Basses and Hautes Mourottes, turned east above Ladoix-Serrigny, to Les Charlemagne facing west to north-west above Pernand-Vergelesses. It is this rotation around the relief that explains why no two corton-charlemagne are alike.
The vineyard is tiered between 280 and 330 metres in altitude, on steep gradients — 20 to 23% according to the BIVB data reproduced by Wikipedia. As recorded in 2008, 52.44 hectares were in production for 2,237 hectolitres, that is a little under 300,000 bottles. On that scale, Corton-Charlemagne weighs more than all the other white grands crus of the Côte de Nuits and the Côte de Beaune combined: over that period, more than two bottles in three of white Burgundian grand cru bore its name.
The Terroir: A Band of Oolithic Limestone Beneath the Wood
The key is a narrow band of bare rock. On the slopes lying just below the Bois de Corton, most of the surface clay cover has been carried away by erosion, leaving an oolithic limestone mixed with marls to outcrop. Wikipedia describes yellowish, ochre and brown marly soils, rich in clay, where limestone beds alternate with marls beneath a thin layer of rendzinas. This pale, shallow and cold soil is the one that suits chardonnay.
Going down the slope, the nature of the soil shifts: limestone gives way to more clayey, more ferruginous ground, laden with scree and ammonite fossils — the domain of pinot noir, and therefore of the Corton appellation. The two areas do not follow one another cleanly, they partly overlap: some ordinarily red lieux-dits, such as Le Rognet et Corton, Les Renardes or Le Corton, have segments that bite into the limestone band, and the rare rows of chardonnay planted there may be claimed as Corton-Charlemagne. The lieux-dits that supply most of the appellation are Le Charlemagne, Les Pougets and Les Languettes.
A Mesoclimate Cooler Than That of the Red Corton
The hill shares the continental climate of the Côte-d'Or, but Corton-Charlemagne systematically occupies the coolest positions on it. The mesoclimate of the upper crown is slightly colder than that of the lower pinot noir slopes, by a few growing degree-days. Above all, most of the grapes come from the lieux-dits Le Charlemagne and En Charlemagne, facing west: less favourably oriented than the eastern sectors of the Corton, they ripen later and give wines that are a little less ample, but tauter.
This coolness has a cost. Chardonnay buds early and dreads spring frosts; it also fears powdery mildew and fanleaf degeneration, the virus transmitted by nematodes that stunts the foliage. The winter of 1985 marked the hill: temperatures falling to −27°C destroyed a substantial part of the vineyard, and the replanting that followed redistributed the varieties, some owners replacing chardonnay with pinot noir and vice versa. The cahier des charges also imposes a minimum density of 9,000 vines per hectare, prohibits irrigation, continuous presses and wood chips, and holds the wines in ageing at least until 15 June of the year following the harvest.
The Style: A Chardonnay That Does Not Give Itself Up Quickly
Pale gold with green glints, young corton-charlemagne is already recognisable by its buttery tones, its aromas of citrus and pineapple, lime blossom and baked apple, fern, cinnamon, flint, juniper and honey. The palate is concentrated, rich, opulent and round, without ever losing its frame. Tom Stevenson describes it as the most sumptuous of the white wines of Burgundy.
It is also one of the slowest. Clive Coates observes that it matures more slowly than the montrachet and that a well-made bottle of a good vintage needs at least ten years before reaching its peak. He also notes a geography of taste: the wines of the Pernand-Vergelesses side tend towards flint and austerity, those of the Aloxe-Corton side are firmer and fleshier. At table it is served between 12 and 14°C with foie gras, shellfish — lobster, crayfish, crab — poultry or veal in a white sauce, or even a blue cheese.
Charlemagne: What the Sources Actually Say
The historical fact is solid: in 775 Charlemagne gave the greater part of the Corton hill to the abbey of Saint-Andoche at Saulieu, destroyed by the Saracens in 731. A "Clos le Charlemagne" then appears in a lease granted by the chapter of Saint-Andoche in 1375: the name is therefore attested in the Middle Ages. What follows is much less so. The story according to which the emperor's wife, tired of seeing red wine stain his beard, had part of the slope pulled up in order to plant white there, is presented by the encyclopaedias as a later legend, with no source contemporary with the events.
Two elements moreover invite caution. First, white has not always been the obvious choice here: in his Topographie de tous les vignobles connus of 1816, André Jullien mentions no white wine at Corton, and it is not until the work of Jules Lavalle in 1855 that one reads the distribution known today — pinot noir in the middle and lower slope, "pinot blanc" on the heights. Second, that "pinot blanc" was not necessarily chardonnay: until the end of the nineteenth century, aligoté was the hill's main white variety, alongside pinot beurot (pinot gris) and pinot blanc. The chardonnay monoculture taken to be eternal is in fact recent.
A Fragmented Ownership, a Few Benchmarks
Like almost all Burgundian grands crus, Corton-Charlemagne is divided among numerous owners: some bottle at the estate, others sell their crop to merchant houses which blend several parcels under a single label. Clive Coates described a section of about sixteen hectares on the Aloxe-Corton side, which includes the Hospices de Beaune and the house of Louis Latour, and a section of about nineteen hectares on the Pernand-Vergelesses side. These breakdowns date from the early 2000s and may have changed since.
The largest owner of a single block was Domaine Bonneau du Martray, credited with 9.5 hectares by Hugh Johnson in 2003, Domaine Comte Senard also holding a significant share of the Pernand side. Wikipedia further cites, among the producers of the appellation, the estates Rapet, Jacques Prieur, Capitain, Jacob, Denis Père et Fils, Marey and Bruno Colin, and the house of Faiveley. Here again, parcels change hands: these mentions serve as reading benchmarks, not as an up-to-date inventory.