- Any of various red or white wines produced in Burgundy, France.
- Any of various similar wines produced elsewhere.
- burgundy A dark grayish or blackish red to dark purplish red or reddish brown.
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1. One of the world's most famous wine growing areas, located in eastern France, southeast of Paris. The Burgundy region has established a reputation over centuries for fine wines, which vary considerably from region to region. Burgundy, known in France as Bourgogne, consists of five basic regions-Chablis, the Côte d'Or (divided into Côte de Beaune and Côte de Nuits), the Côte Chalonnaise, the Maconnais and Beaujolais. The focus in Burgundy is on three grape varieties-Pinot Noir and Gamay for red wines, Chardonnay for whites. Although wines made with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay get most of the attention, there are more Gamay-based wines produced (in Beaujolais) than in all of the remaining Burgundy region. Among the notable wines from this region are Chablis, Fleurie, Gevrey-Chambertin, Meursault, Montagny and Pouilly-Fuissé. 2. Burgundy is also a generic name used for ordinary, inexpensive red wine made outside of France in countries like Australia, South Africa and the United States. Although many of the bulk producers in these countries are starting to call these wines "red table wine," the word "Burgundy" still appears on some wine bottle labels.
The early modern state of Burgundy was the product of a historical accident. When Charles the Bold (1433–1477), the last Valois duke of Burgundy (1467–1477), was murdered in 1477, his various and sundry lands and estates were divided up between the king of France and the Holy Roman emperor. While the large duchy of Burgundy was soon incorporated into the kingdom of France, the free county of Burgundy just across the Saône River (Franche-Comté) was quickly absorbed into the empire. Moreover, all the territories that made up the Burgundian Netherlands—the counties of Flanders, Holland, Zeeland, Hainaut, and Namur as well as the duchies of Brabant, Limburg, and Luxembourg—also swore allegiance to the emperor. Thus what had once been a politically powerful buffer state that separated France and the empire and stretched from the North Sea to the Franco-Swiss border was now divided between these two European powers. With its twin courts at Brussels and Dijon permanently separated, Burgundy's political influence was no longer as significant as it had once been, when it held the balance of power between England and France in the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453).
These Franco-Habsburg tensions intensified less than two decades after Charles the Bold's death, when the French king Charles VIII (ruled 1483–1498) invaded Italy in a dispute over the emperor's claim to the vacant duchy of Milan, starting the Habsburg-Valois Wars (1494–1559). Charles V (1519–1556), the grandson and heir of Maximilian I (ruled 1493–1519), later tried to reunite the duchy to the rest of the Burgundian state under Habsburg control. Having captured King Francis I of France (1515–1547) on the battlefield at Pavia in Italy in 1525, Charles succeeded in getting him to renounce the duchy of Burgundy as part of the deal to release him. Francis reneged on his promise once he acquired his freedom, however, and the duchy remained in French hands. Moreover the Burgundian political elites of the duchy made it known to all that they were loyal Frenchmen and had no desire to be transferred to the sovereignty of the emperor to reunite with the other former Burgundian territories in the empire. Although neither Francis I nor Charles V managed to gain any permanent territorial advantage in Italy from the Habsburg-Valois Wars, this conflict served as a backdrop to the foreign policies of both states for the rest of the early modern period. Indeed even after the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis formally ended the wars in 1559, Habsburg-Valois tensions continued to ferment, a situation not helped by the advent of Protestantism in both states.
With the coming of the Reformation in France, the duchy of Burgundy became a bastion for the traditional religion and a bulwark against the new Calvinist faith, which most Burgundians, like most French Catholics, tended to see as heresy. The royal governor of Burgundy from the 1530s to the 1590s was a member of the militantly Catholic Guise family, so the many patronage networks of the Guises worked long and hard in the province to prevent the spread of heresy. Calvinism nevertheless managed to gain a foothold in some of the principal Burgundian towns by 1560, and tensions between the two faiths broke out in violence, as it did in many towns throughout the kingdom in the early 1560s. Most Burgundians had supported the attempts of Kings Henry II (ruled 1547–1559) and Francis II (ruled 1559–1560) to suppress Protestantism, by force if necessary. But they were explicitly hostile to the edict of January 1562, since it gave legal recognition to the French Protestants for the first time. When the French Wars of Religion officially broke out in 1562, Burgundy fought against both the Protestants and the crown's continuous attempts to make peace with them over the next four decades. Burgundy remained a bastion of Catholicism and became a stronghold of the Catholic League after the death of the last Valois heir in 1584 made Henry of Navarre (Henry IV; ruled 1589–1610), the leader of the French Protestants, presumptive heir to the throne.
The battles with the crown over religion in the sixteenth century turned to politics in the seventeenth century. First Henry IV began to intervene in local elections for mayor in several Burgundian towns in 1609, altering a process of independence that had originated under the Valois dukes. Then in the 1630s his son and successor, Louis XIII (ruled 1610–1643), attempted to take away the province's traditional right to assess and collect its own taxes through its provincial Estates. When Louis tried to suppress the Estates and replace them with royal tax officials, many in the province fought back. A band of citizens in Dijon—mainly winegrowers and artisans—actually burned down the houses of several members of Dijon's parlement (sovereign court) who spoke out in favor of the king's plan. Louis went in person to Dijon to punish the culprits as well as to chide the elites for not fully supporting his venture. By the time of the Fronde in 1648, Burgundy's elites had been won over to the crown's wishes on virtually all political matters, as the king continued to reward them handsomely for their cooperation. As a result there was no opposition to the crown in Burgundy when parlements in other regions revolted in 1648. And for the most part Burgundy's elites continued to support French kings right up to the Revolution of 1789.
Louis XIV (ruled 1643–1715) managed to reunite the free county of Burgundy with the duchy in 1674, when his troops occupied Franche-Comté and brought the county under French control. Thus the two Burgundies, as contemporaries were still referring to the duchy and the county, were both under the authority of one prince for the first time since 1477. Like their fellow subjects in the duchy, the elites of Franche-Comté tended for the most part to be willing, loyal subjects of the king of France in return for largesse, rewards, and perquisites. From one-time enemies of France during the Hundred Years' War, Burgundians by the late seventeenth century had become some of the most ardent defenders of the Catholic Church and the French crown.
Bibliography
Drouot, Henri. Mayenne et la Bourgogne: Étude sur la Ligue, 1587–1596. 2 vols. Dijon and Paris, 1937.
Farr, James R. Hands of Honor: Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550–1650. Ithaca, N.Y., 1988.
Holt, Mack P. "Wine, Community and Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Burgundy," Past and Present 138 (February 1993): 58–93.
Vaughan, Richard. Valois Burgundy. London, 1975.
—MACK P. HOLT
[BER-gun-dee] One of the world's most famous winegrowing areas, located in eastern France, southeast of Paris. Bourgogne, as it's called in France, has about 110,000 vineyard acres, which is about 40 percent of what exists in bordeaux. Burgundy consists of five basic regions-chablis in the north, the côte d'or the côte chalonnaise the macônnais and beaujolais which is farthest south. The Côte d'Or is futher divided into two well-known sections-côte de beaune in the south and côte de nuits in the north. Burgundy and its wines have a long history going back at least to the time when the Romans ruled this region. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Grand Duchy of Burgundy flourished, controlling an area that included what are now parts of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and a large portion of northern France. It was a rich and powerful empire, and the great Dukes of Burgundy savored the region's marvelous wines as part of their opulent lifestyle. The Burgundy region has established a reputation over the centuries not only for its fine wines but also for its marvelous food. The wines vary considerably from region to region throughout Burgundy, but the focus is on three grape varieties-pinot noir and gamay for red wines and chardonnay for whites. Though other varieties are grown-such as the white aligoté, pinot blanc, sauvignon blanc and Sacy and the red Cesar-they're being replaced in many areas by the three most prominent grapes. Gamay is the dominant red grape in Beaujolais, while Pinot Noir prevails in the other regions. The very best red wines come from the grands crus in the Côte d'Or. Chardonnay is grown throughout the region and reaches its zenith in the Côte de Beaune. Although the wines made of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay get most of the attention, more wines are produced in Beaujolais (where they make Gamay-based wines) than in the rest of Burgundy. In some ways, the Burgundian system for identifying quality wines is much more straightforward than that of bordeaux. In addition to the appellation d'origine contrôlée (ac) Bordeaux uses a complex and inconsistent château classification system. Burgundy uses only the AC system to classify regions, villages, and individual vineyards into appellations, the theory being that the smaller and more precise the appellation, the higher the general quality of the wine. At the lowest quality level (usually), the AC system starts with general regional appellations that cover all of Burgundy, such as bourgogne ac, bourgogne aligoté ac, bourgogne grand ordinaire ac and bourgogne passe-tout-grain ac. Less general are the specific regional appellations like Chablis AC, Beaujolais AC, haute-côtes de beaune ac and haute-côtes de nuits ac. Next up on the quality scale are the village appellations, which allow single villages to use their name on the label (for example, gevrey-chambertin, givry, meursault, pommard and volnay). In the Beaujolais region, there are ten villages (called crus) with the right to specific village appellations: brouilly, fleurie, morgon and moulin-à-vent to name a few. Some vineyards are now adding the vineyard name after the village name to further differentiate themselves. Ranking next to the top of this appellation progression are the premier cru (first-growth) vineyards, which are individual vineyard sites that have historically produced superior wine. (Note that premier cru is the very top rating for châteaux in Bordeaux.) Burgundy premier cru wines use the village name, the vineyard name, and the term "Premier Cru" on the label. The only exception is when the wine is a blend of several premier cru vineyards, in which case the village name and the term "Premier Cru" appear. At the very top of the quality hierarchy are the grands crus (great growths), which are the few very select sites that traditionally produce exceptional wines. Grand cru wines need only the vineyard name and the term "Grand Cru" on the label. Burgundy's seemingly straightforward ranking of appellations deteriorates, however, because the ownership structure in Burgundy, triggered by events that began with the French Revolution in the late eighteenth century, results in myriad small owners. The oft-used example is Clos de Vougeot, a 125-acre grand cru vineyard that now has around eighty different owners, each with a small parcel. The quality of wines made from this vineyard by the multitude of producers varies widely, yet all have the right to call their wine Clos de Vougeot, Grand Cru. It's thought that many of the best producers do a better job with their premier cru vineyards than some of the poorer producers with their grand cru vineyards. The same holds true with the best producers and their village-appellation vineyards versus the lesser producers with premier cru vineyards. So, although the appellation system is fairly straightforward, true Burgundy lovers study the individual producers to determine which wines they like best.
n. - Bourgogne
Français (French)
n. - (Géog) Bourgogne
adj. - bourguignon, de Bourgogne
n. - Bourgogne
Deutsch (German)
n. - Burgund, Burgunder(wein), Burgunderrot
adj. - burgunderrot
n. - Burgund
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - κρασί Βουργουνδίας, σκουροκόκκινο χρώμα
adj. - σκουροκόκκινος
Português (Portuguese)
n. - Borgonha (f), vinho (m) dessa região, cor (f) de vinho
adj. - da ou relativo a Borgonha
n. - Burgundy
Русский (Russian)
бургундское вино, цвет бургундского вина
Español (Spanish)
n. - Borgoña
adj. - de Borgoña
n. - Borgoña
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - Bourgogne, bourgognevin
adj. - från Bourgogne
中文(简体) (Chinese (Simplified))
布尔哥尼
勃艮第葡萄酒
中文(繁體) (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 布爾哥尼
n. - 勃艮第葡萄酒
한국어 (Korean)
n. - 부르고뉴(프랑스의 동남부 지방)
부르고뉴 (프랑스의 동남부 지방; 본래 왕국), 부르고뉴에서 나는 적포도주, 짙은 홍색
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - יין בורגונדי
n. - בורגנדי
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