WTN: burgundy
James Harbeck
burgundy
Today I’m tasting burgundy. You may notice that I haven’t capitalized the word. No need to be high-and-mighty; my current theme is colours, and the name of the colour is lower-cased. Not that I can limit myself to the colour with this word, naturally, but it is a good place for me to start, because it was the colour that was my introduction to burgundy – specifically, the burgundy Oldsmobile Delta 88 two-door sedan that my parents bought in the mid-1970s.
It’s been even more personal than that for me, too; in my early 20s, for a time I dyed my hair burgundy. I know this would not have met the approval of Lola in Kinky Boots, whose disdain for the colour was quotable: “Please, God, tell me I have not inspired something burgundy. …Red is the colour of sex! Burgundy is the colour of hot water bottles!” But I have had many agreeable experiences with the colour, though most of them when it was in a glass.
About that, by the way. When I look at the official RGB version of the colour burgundy, #800020, it seems rather darker and duller than the wines of Burgundy. But when I look at photos of Burgundy wine in a glass, I have to admit it’s pretty spot on. It’s just that red Burgundy wines, being made from Pinot Noir grapes, are more translucent; in many lighting conditions they fairly shine and glow, and so they seem lighter.
Not on the pocket-book, though. Burgundy wines are among the highest and mightiest; the most expensive winesin the world are Burgundy – prices run well into the five figures for a bottle and leave even the top Bordeaux wines in the dust. Part of this is that the grapes they’re made with, Pinot Noir, are hard to work with; they grow in tight pine-cone-shaped clusters (hence the name) and are as thin-skinned as some of their most ardent partisans. Part of it is that Burgundy isn’t all that large a growing region, and it’s the farthest north of any major red wine region in the world. Part of it, certainly, is that the best Burgundy wines are indeed extremely good (though they’re not everyone’s favourite; I for one fancy the Bordeaux style more). And part of it is marketing – a campaign that has been going on for most of a millennium, since Philip II the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, declared that only Pinot Noir grapes could be used to make red wine in his lands. Gamay was banished to Beaujolais. There’s nothing like message discipline, eh? The fact that the Dukes of Burgundy were among the highest and mightiest in France certainly helped.
Of course, Pinot Noir grapes had been in the region since time immemorial. Which is more than you can say for the name Burgundy. Oh, it’s not that Burgundy is the English version and Bourgogne the French; in point of fact, the French is farther from the original. In Latin it was Burgundia, but that came from an older Burgundi, which traces back to the Proto-Indo-European *bʰérǵʰonts, which meant ‘high, mighty’. This Burgundi was the name of a Germanic tribe.
Germanic? In the heart of France? Yes, indeed. France has plenty of Germanic and Celtic historical influence. But, although modern Bourgogne has its high points, the Burgundi didn’t get their name from that. Nor did they get their name from the even higher Massif Central of France, further south, where they were before they moved north into the area that now has their name (they also had land as far south as the coast). They only moved there in the 400s, in fact, after having been resettled there from the middle Rhine region, around Alsace.
The middle Rhine region? That’s not very high at all. But wait. Were they from there originally? It’s harder to trace before that, but it’s thought they (or, you know, the core part of their ancestors; people do intermarry over time with others in the area) may have come from the valley of the Vistula – the river that runs through Kraków and Warsaw. In Poland. Which would not explain how they came to have a high-and-mighty Germanic name. But there’s one more dot to connect.
Well, maybe. There is a place called Bornholm that has in the past been ruled by Norway and Sweden but now belongs to Denmark, and its name historically was Burgundaholmr. The Burgundians might – might – have originally come by way of there, possibly from even farther north. Or it could just be coincidence. After all, the Burgunda part can be taken to refer to a high rock, which Bornholm does have. And the holmr means ‘island’.
Yes, Bornholm is an island in the Baltic Sea. It is one of the most eco-friendly places in the world; its power is mostly generated from wind and sun and by other eco-friendly means, and their rate of recycling is very high. They don’t grow grapes there, however. And their flag has no burgundy in it… though it does have red, lots of red. But you can get some Burgundy there. Go to Kadeau, their Michelin-starred restaurant; it has a mighty list of them – of course, the prices are rather high.
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