An Appellation Running from the Yonne to the Beaujolais
No other Burgundian appellation has so wide an area. Coteaux Bourguignons may be produced in 384 communes across four départements: the Yonne (54 communes, from Auxerre to Tonnerre by way of Chablis, Irancy and Vézelay), the Côte-d'Or (91 communes, from Dijon to Châtillon-sur-Seine, crossing the whole Côte), Saône-et-Loire (154 communes, Côte chalonnaise and Mâconnais) and the Rhône (85 communes of the Beaujolais). From north of Chablis to south of Villié-Morgon, the area covers nearly 300 kilometres.
This improbable geography has a consequence: Coteaux Bourguignons is not a terroir but a status. The appellation is claimed on only a very modest surface, a few hundred hectares in a vineyard that counts tens of thousands. It serves as a safety net and as a space of freedom: piedmont plots, young vines, heavier or cooler soils, and above all the blends that the classic Burgundian hierarchy permits nowhere else.
The Terroir: Every Stage of the Jurassic, and the Granites of the Beaujolais
It is impossible to speak of a single soil. The Coteaux Bourguignons area crosses the entire stratigraphic column of the Burgundian vineyard. In the north, in the Yonne, one finds the Kimmeridgian marls and limestones and the Portlandian limestones of the Upper Jurassic, the very ones that carry Chablis and Irancy. In the Côte-d'Or, it is the Middle Jurassic limestones — Bajocian, Bathonian, Callovian — and the Oxfordian marls that structure the slope. Further south, in the Côte chalonnaise and the Mâconnais, the same beds rise again and are complicated into a mosaic of faults.
Then, south of Mâcon, everything changes: the Beaujolais tips onto the crystalline basement of the Massif central, granites and granitic grus in the north, more clayey sedimentary ground in the south. The cahier des charges indeed describes plots occupying "every situation", including piedmonts with relatively heavy soils and plateaus and back slopes with a cool, well-ventilated climate — that is to say, precisely the positions the village appellations leave aside. The common denominator remains free-draining soils, able to shed excess water while warming up quickly.
Climate: The Northern Constraint, from the Yonne to the Beaujolais
Burgundy is a northern vineyard where the vine is under strong climatic constraint: the climate is temperate with a continental tendency, with cold winters, dreaded spring frosts and hot but short summers. It is this constraint that explains why vine planting is limited to the most favourable situations, landforms endowed with mesoclimates warmer and drier than the regional climate.
Over so long an area, the nuances are considerable. The Yonne, the most northerly, gives tauter, tangier wines; the Côte-d'Or offers the happy medium; Saône-et-Loire and above all the Beaujolais, under a southern influence travelling up the Saône valley, bring ripeness and generosity to gamay. A Coteaux Bourguignons from the north and one from the south have almost nothing in common — except their label.
Free Blending: The Appellation's Singularity
In Burgundy the rule is the single variety: pinot noir in red, chardonnay in white. Coteaux Bourguignons is the exception. For the reds the cahier des charges retains two main varieties — gamay and pinot noir — plus césar for the Yonne département alone, without fixing any proportion between them. A grower may therefore make a Coteaux Bourguignons that is 100% gamay, 100% pinot noir, or any dosage in between. Accessory varieties (aligoté, chardonnay, gamay de Bouze, gamay de Chaudenay, melon, pinot blanc, pinot gris) are tolerated up to 10% of the blend.
This is the essential difference from Bourgogne Passe-tout-grains, the region's other blending AOC, which on the contrary imposes a minimum of pinot noir and a minimum of gamay. In white, Coteaux Bourguignons is made from aligoté, chardonnay, melon, pinot blanc and pinot gris — again with no imposed hierarchy. The appellation finally allows two wordings: "clairet", reserved for the rosés, and "primeur" or "nouveau" for wines meeting the corresponding conditions.
The Style of the Wines: Fruit, Straight Away
The cahier des charges says so bluntly itself: the reds and rosés are very fruity, with a fairly fine tannic structure, and can show great finesse; the whites are generally floral and fresh. These characters are preserved by short ageing — no long spell in barrel here. These are wines designed to be drunk young, when their aromatic power is at its peak.
In practice, the gamay/pinot noir slider draws two families. Gamay-dominated cuvées, often from the Beaujolais or the Mâconnais, are juicy and crunchy, on cherry and raspberry, to be served lightly chilled. Pinot noir-dominated cuvées, more northerly, gain in poise and in shades of undergrowth. Both go with charcuterie, poultry, white meats and bistro dishes; the whites, floral and lively, call for fish and pressed cheeses.
From "Grand Ordinaire" to Coteaux Bourguignons: The Story of a Name Change
These wines descend directly from the traditional, large-scale production of so-called "grands ordinaires" or "ordinaires" wines, sometimes called "vins de gamets" after their grape variety. Their economic weight was considerable as early as the nineteenth century: they supplied local consumption and that of the neighbouring towns and industrial centres, Le Creusot and the mining basins of Autun, Épinac and Montceau. A distinction was then drawn between "ordinaires" wines, made from common varieties such as gamay or melon, and the "grands ordinaires" and passe-tout-grains, which contained a greater proportion of "fine varieties" — pinot noir and chardonnay.
Between 1919 and 1930 a series of court rulings progressively framed the "Bourgogne ordinaire" appellation of origin, equated it with "Bourgogne grand ordinaire" and extended it to the whole of viticultural Burgundy; the AOC was recognised by decree on 31 July 1937. But the word "ordinaire" had become commercially untenable. Decree no. 2011-1618 of 23 November 2011 substituted the name "Coteaux Bourguignons", the names "Bourgogne grand ordinaire" and "Bourgogne ordinaire" remaining in traditional use in place of the appellation name. The cahier des charges in force was approved by order of 12 January 2024.