At a meeting on November 28, the INAO - France's Committee for Wine Appellations - decided to reopen the application for the delineation of the AOC Bourgogne and Coteaux Bourguignons in the Burgundy and Beaujolais regions. At the same time, an investigative committee was established to address the parceling of the relevant appellations. This aims to settle an old dispute that began on April 29, 1930, with a ruling by the Civil Court of Dijon, which defined the Burgundy wine-growing area. At that time, the Villefranche-sur-Saône arrondissement in the Rhône department was also included, as Beaujolais was historically considered a wine-growing area of Burgundy.
In the following decades, there were fierce debates regarding the extent to which Beaujolais winemakers were allowed to cultivate traditional Burgundian grape varieties like Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Aligoté, and how these wines should be labeled. On one side were the traditionalists from Burgundy, as well as winemakers from the Mâconnais region, which borders Beaujolais, while on the other were the Burgundy trading houses and the Association des Producteurs de Bourgogne en Beaujolais (APBB, Association of Burgundy Producers in Beaujolais), which continues to advocate for greater liberalization.
The rules for producing Bourgogne Rouge from Pinot Noir in Beaujolais remain highly controversial.
According to the APBB, today 45% of the vineyard areas for Crémant de Bourgogne are located in the Rhône department, worked by 618 winemakers. Around 2011, the production of white Burgundy (600 ha/1,500 ac of Chardonnay) in Beaujolais was prohibited in 45 of 96 municipalities, and Aligoté was entirely banned. The rules for producing Bourgogne Rouge from Pinot Noir in Beaujolais remain highly controversial. There is hope that this dispute might finally be resolved. "The two regions are talking and communicating," says Thiébault Huber, head of the Burgundy Appellations Association (CAVB), quoted by the industry platform Vitisphere. "That was not the case before."
In this context, there is also progress regarding the designation of two new sub-appellations: Bourgogne-Dijon and Beaujolais Pierres Dorées. The former is intended to include wines produced in the 23 municipalities that make up the larger "Dijon Metropole" area. This would encompass winemakers from the municipalities of Dijon, Daix, Plombières-les-Dijon, Talant, and Corcelles-les-Monts, located in the central and northwestern districts of the urban area. The Pays du Beaujolais des Pierres Dorées, on the other hand, stretches about 30 kilometers north of Lyon, from the borders of Tarare to Villefranche-sur-Saône. The corresponding AOC Beaujolais Pierres Dorées would become the 13th appellation of Beaujolais. Stefan Pegatzky
