Sixteen Communes, from Corton to the Maranges
The Côte de Beaune-Villages area runs the entire length of the Côte de Beaune vineyard. In the Côte-d'Or: Auxey-Duresses, Chassagne-Montrachet, Chorey-lès-Beaune, Ladoix-Serrigny, Meursault, Monthélie, Pernand-Vergelesses, Puligny-Montrachet, Saint-Aubin, Saint-Romain, Santenay and Savigny-lès-Beaune. In Saône-et-Loire: Cheilly-lès-Maranges, Dezize-lès-Maranges, Sampigny-lès-Maranges and Remigny. The delimited plots are exactly those defined by the cahiers des charges of each of these village appellations: a vine eligible for côte-de-beaune-villages is therefore always, at the same time, a vine eligible for its own village appellation.
Four communes of the Côte de Beaune are missing from the roll call, and that is no accident: Aloxe-Corton, Beaune, Pommard and Volnay, all specialising in top-flight reds, are excluded from the scheme. In other words, the appellation gathers those villages of the Côte de Beaune whose vocation is not exclusively the great red — including the great white names such as Meursault or Puligny-Montrachet, whose few plots of pinot noir may fall into this category.
The Terroir: All the Diversity of the Côte de Beaune in a Single Appellation
Since the area covers more than a dozen separate village territories, there is no single côte-de-beaune-villages terroir but a collection of terroirs. The general pattern, however, is that of the Côte de Beaune, born in the Upper Jurassic: gentler slopes and more varied hillsides than in the Côte de Nuits, and a Comblanchien limestone which, once it dips below the surface, reappears only at Meursault. From the top of the slope down, one meets brown limestone soils over a thin layer of earth, then red gravels, ferruginous oolite and yellow limestones.
Towards the south, marls are interbedded with the limestone and the soils become more clayey, sometimes sandy — the signature of the Chassagne-Santenay-Maranges sector, where the Côte fractures and bends. The dominant exposures are due south and south-east. This diversity is precisely the point of the appellation: a grower or a merchant can marry a light, perfumed pinot noir from Savigny with a firmer one from Santenay, building a balance that no village appellation would allow.
The Style of the Wines: From North to South of the Côte
The BIVB describes two profiles according to latitude. In the north, between Ladoix-Serrigny and Savigny-lès-Beaune, the wines show a discreet, firm robe, mid-ruby to light purple; the bouquet marries small red and black fruits — strawberry, redcurrant, blackcurrant, blackberry — with flowers, violet above all. These are supple, appealing wines, enticing and charming, made for immediate pleasure.
To the south, around Chassagne, Santenay and the Maranges, the colour deepens, dark ruby to purplish. The aromas stay on the same fruit notes, but humus, damp earth, undergrowth and mushroom join them. Carried by good acidity, the tannins speak more, in a controlled power. Served between 14 and 16°C, côte-de-beaune-villages is a companion to generous family cooking: offal, roast pork, rabbit, braised beef, a simple steak — and it is not afraid of more exotic dishes, kebabs, keftas or chilli con carne.
How to Read the Label: The Grower's Three Options
This is where everything is decided. A red wine produced in the area of one of these communes may be sold in three ways: under the name of the village appellation; under that name followed by the words "Côte de Beaune"; or under the Côte de Beaune-Villages appellation. The example given by the BIVB is perfectly clear: a red from the Chorey-lès-Beaune area may be called "Chorey-lès-Beaune", "Chorey Côte de Beaune" or "Côte de Beaune-Villages". In the same way, a red maranges may be labelled "Maranges Côte de Beaune".
In practice, since the village appellations are more prestigious — and therefore sell better — and since the cahier des charges is identical, the village name almost always wins. That explains a spectacular figure: the area claimed as côte-de-beaune-villages was just 0.48 hectare in 2022, for an average harvest of 31 hectolitres a year over 2017-2021. The appellation therefore survives, essentially, only in its original role: allowing red wines from several communes to be blended.
Not to Be Confused with the Côte de Beaune AOC
This is the commonest confusion in all Burgundy, and it deserves to be taken apart point by point. "Côte de Beaune-Villages" is a fallback appellation, red only, potentially from sixteen communes, and the only one to allow blending between villages. "Côte de Beaune" on its own is a fully fledged village appellation, which exists in red and in white, and which is produced exclusively on lieux-dits within the commune of Beaune, right at the top of the Montagne de Beaune — some thirty hectares in all. The BIVB is careful to spell it out on its own fact sheet: the two appellations "are different".
And there is a third use of the words: "Côte de Beaune" appended to a village name, as in "Auxey-Duresses Côte de Beaune" or "Maranges Côte de Beaune". There it is simply a complementary geographical denomination: the wine remains an auxey-duresses or a maranges. Three markers are enough: if a village name comes first, it is the village that counts; if the label carries "Villages", it is a blend from the Côte; if it carries "Côte de Beaune" and nothing else, it is a wine from Beaune.
A Legacy of the 1937 Decree
The appellation was born on 31 July 1937, in the great wave of delimitation that shaped modern Burgundy. The founding decree created "Côte de Beaune-Villages" and then subdivided it into fifteen village appellations — among which still figured "Cheilly-lès-Maranges", "Dezize-lès-Maranges" and "Sampigny-lès-Maranges", which would be brought together under the name Maranges only from the 1988 harvest. The logic was explicit: give each village its name, and provide a collective name for wines mixing several origins.
Nearly ninety years on, that logic has done its work — too well, perhaps. The villages have won their fame, and the collective appellation has been drained of its substance until it became almost confidential. It remains, however, a precious witness to the way Burgundy organised itself, and a tool for anyone seeking to compose an all-round red, representative of the whole Côte de Beaune rather than of a single one of its slopes.