When Did Burgundy Become Untouchable?

Burgundy is a hallowed ground for the wine world. It’s a place of lore and legend, of DRC, Montrachet, endless “climats,” and a winemaking history formed when Romans still ruled. It’s the gold standard for wine drinkers, and the north star for Chardonnay and Pinot producers around the world.

As such, Burgundian wine has never been cheap. But it used to be affordable and, importantly, accessible.

That’s changed. In recent years, Burgundy has reached new heights in popularity and price.

Upper-tier producers will set you back four figures, and that’s if you can acquire them — allocations have tightened, making the region’s top bottles more elusive than ever, even for Michelin-starred wine programs.

“It’s frustrating that to drink Burgundy, you have to spend money,” says Libby Winters, a sommelier at The Grill, Major Food Group’s swanky steakhouse in New York’s Seagram building.

At the same time, Burgundy production is only getting smaller — the 2024 harvest was one of the smallest in the last 15 years, according to the Bureau Interprofessionnel des Vins de Bourgogne (BIVB), second only to 2021. Climate change has widened Burgundy’s vintage variability, adding a level of unpredictability to each year’s releases. This should affect the wine’s stratospheric prices, but collectors don’t care.

Bottle variation? Harsh markups? Threat of premox? Seemingly nothing can tarnish Burgundy’s reputation. Which leads to the question: When did Burgundy take over wine’s upper tier? And can anything disrupt its reign?

A Steep Ascent

Burgundy has always been vaunted and wanted, but in the last five years, demand has been particularly ferocious.

Haden Riles works at Sushi Noz, a hyper-exclusive omakase counter that boasts a 70-page wine list with 700-plus SKUs of Burgundy. “It’s most of the product we sell,” Riles says. “If it’s not sake, it’s Burgundy. There’s a slim margin for Champagne tucked away after that.”

Even with two Michelin stars, allocations are tricky — there are some producers he can only get three, maybe six bottles of. With such limited quantities, Riles is judicious about inventory. Burgundy headhunters exist, and they will swoop up the restaurant’s entire stock, regardless of the markup.

“We often keep the top-tier wines off the list as people will come in and try and buy them all,” Riles adds. “It’s not interesting when you have a two-top come in and buy six bottles to take home.”

“It’s status without shouting. Napa Cab can feel loud. Burgundy can feel like quiet luxury. That matters to a certain consumer segment right now.”

This octane of demand is understandable for top-tier producers — Domaine de la Romanée Conti, Lamy-Caillat, PYCM, Raveneau, Hubert Lamy, Ramonet, Dauvissat, and all the other mononym or acronymed producers collectors love to name-check.

But Burgundy, all Burgundy, is popping off. “You can barely buy into village-level Burgundy for under $100 right now,” says Matthew Jacobson, head sommelier at the Fairmont Pacific Rim in Vancouver. “I have the exact same allocations of Ramonet, for example, but every single year they go up 25 percent. Five years ago I’d be able to get these allocations for $50 wholesale. Now I’m over $100.”

Even Aligoté is booming as the last vestige of value in the region. Customers hoping to try bottles from expensive or hard-to-find producers might not be able to afford their higher-end bottlings, but can secure their Aligoté for an under-$50 price point. But as more wine pros tout the once-underrated gem as the “other white Burgundy,” even the Aligotés are growing scarce.

Supply, Demand, and Bordeaux

The concept of a prestigious, luxury wine region isn’t exactly new; certain appellations have always carried clout. In past decades areas like Napa, Bordeaux, Barolo, and Brunello all held a similar caché. So when did every sommelier, wine pro, and collector narrow their focus on Burgundy? When did Burgundy essentially become the only name that matters in fine wine?

“It’s status without shouting,” says Romain Chevrolat, winemaker at Burgundy’s Domaine Laroche. “Napa Cab can feel loud. Burgundy can feel like quiet luxury. That matters to a certain consumer segment right now.”

Walker Strangis of high-end retailer Walker Wine Co., who has spent his career sourcing rare wines in the secondary market, saw Burgundy start to take off in the early aughts, and it’s only gained momentum. Similarly, Brian Weitzman, the executive director of wine at Wynn Las Vegas, first noticed Burgundy’s star start to rise in 2011 when Bordeaux started losing market share. Napa (“it’s king in Vegas”) and Bordeaux still sell. He regularly hosts dinners with Screaming Eagle and weekends events with Opus One. But he notes that Burgundy sells at lightning speed, specifically since the pandemic.

In 2025, Burgundy exports reached a 15-year high, according to the BIVB. The AOC Bourgogne and Mâcon wines, historically entry-level in pricing and quality, grew by 13 percent and 10 percent, respectively. At the same time, French AOC wines overall experienced a four-year downturn.

In the last five years, Burgundy has benefitted from this perfect storm of fortifying factors.

Quality is up across the board, with previously disregarded appellations joining the spotlight. “Regions such as the Mâconnais and Mercurey, which do not command the prices of classic Premier Cru and Grand Cru vineyards, are producing better wines than ever,” says Ole Thompson, wine director of retailer Esquin.

The global wine market has also expanded. Evan White, of Texas’s Bludorn Hospitality Group, flagged that markets like China — where Burgundy exports surged 35 percent in the first half of 2024 — Hong Kong, and Singapore have been important Burgundy markets in recent years.

“They’re countries where interest in wine consumption was burgeoning and people had plenty of money to spend — new releases were snapped up without hesitation,” he says.

Not Enough Burgundy to Go Around

Burgundy’s scarcity factor is a big piece. Land holdings in the small region are finite — winemakers can’t just expand production to keep up with popularity by buying up some new vineyards.

“There’s a very real scarcity in Burgundy, as opposed to the perceived scarcity of Bordeaux and Napa,” Strangis says. “In Burgundy there really are just tiny, fractional production levels. These producers only make a few barrels of Montrachet and that supplies the entire world.”

“Finding wines with age is next to impossible, even when visiting the region,” says Matthew Landry, who handles the wine at Matty Matheson’s high-end steakhouse Prime Seafood Palace. “These wines are more for collectors than restaurants at this point.” Burgundy is still a big deal for the restaurant’s wine program, but Landry is starting to look toward other grapes and regions to provide guests with better values.

Even Burgundians can’t get enough Burgundy. Vineyard prices have reached an all-time high, so young producers who aren’t able to purchase more important vineyard sites within Burgundy look to less prestigious plots or even entirely different regions for vines to work with.

“There are people who will only drink Burgundy. [For them] nothing will ever beat Burgundy, and they have the funds to spend $700 on a Tuesday night.”

Pierre Girardin, a 14th-generation Meursault viticulturalist, now holds land in Jura. Theo Dancer and Arnaud Baillot also ventured to the nearby Alpine region, and are now working with Savignin.

Maxime Crotet, long the assistant winemaker at Cossard, was making négociant wines in Burgundy until frosts wiped out yields. Now, he’s sourcing from Beaujolais, Alsace, Jura, and the Rhône, vinifying the wines in his Beaune cellar.

Scarcity isn’t new in Burgundy, but it has been amplified by climate change. The last few vintages have been tumultuous — heat spikes threaten the heartbreak grape and spring frosts amplify disease pressures.

You’d think climate change could slow Burgundy’s roll. It’s only added another element of rarity. “Even when Burgundy has a bad year, it sometimes makes it even more compelling or interesting,” says Riles.

And factors like tariffs and bad vintages only push sticker prices up. “When there’s a really rough vintage, one where producers lost between 20 percent to 60 percent of production to climate events, they have to absorb those losses,” says Strangis. The issue is, once the price goes up, it doesn’t really go back down. Casual wine drinkers are getting priced out, which has left Burgundy largely to those with the money to buy it.

The Luxury Element

Between the complicated nature of the region’s geography, exclusive bottlings, and storied producers, wines from Burgundy are heralded as the pinnacle of the wine world. But one of the existential questions facing Burgundy lovers is, have we hoisted the region on too high a pedestal?

The region appeals to the gamified element of the industry: winning out on the best allocations, splashing out on baller bottles, or knowing the minute details of each vineyard site’s soils. The competitive nature among the industry’s top wine pros and collectors inevitably drove Burgundy’s prestige and pricing to new heights. And it’s reached a point where many big spenders won’t even consider drinking anything else.

“Finding wines with age is next to impossible, even when visiting the region. These wines are more for collectors than restaurants at this point.”

At The Grill, Winters regularly sells blue-chip bottles. She moves DRC. She has a clientele who come in knowing they will be drinking Burgundy.

“You are not going to sway these people,” Winters says. She can try to hand-sell wines that she finds offer just as much excitement and value from regions like Spain or Oregon, but few will budge. These guests don’t really drink across categories — they drink Burgundy, full stop.

Riles notices three camps of people drinking Burgundy at Sushi Noz: people who are celebrating, those with the cash to splash on a $500 bottle, and the super nerds.

“People come into Sushi Noz and get caught up in the glamor of eating and dining at that price point, and they think they should have Burgundy — something worthy of the occasion they’re about to experience,” he says.

It’s frustrating for Riles as a wine pro looking to share new discoveries and a breadth of stellar wines. “What about these incredible Rieslings we’ve found that would pair well?” he says. But today, if someone’s looking to drop money on “the best,” that means Burgundy.

Leading the wine program at a luxury Fairmont property, Jacobson knows he needs to have a great Burgundy selection. It’s a non-negotiable for quote-unquote great programs, but building a list on these expensive bottles is a double-sided coin. “There are people who will only drink Burgundy. [For them] nothing will ever beat Burgundy, and they have the funds to spend $700 on a Tuesday night,” he explains. “But we’ve had to start bringing on Tasmanian Pinot Noir, or bottles from Friuli or Baden because we need to consider wines like this beyond Burgundy for the people who can no longer afford it.”

Bursting the Burgundy Bubble

That leads to another question: Can Burgundy’s bubble burst? Can anything interrupt or mute Burgundy’s success?

“Capitalism, sure, could ruin everything, if Burgundy becomes an obsession with profit over quality,” Winters says. “That’s happening in Napa — they’re producing so much more wine than they can actually sell at those prices.”

But then again, as she points out, Burgundy is so limited by its size, its scarcity, it’s difficult to scale up.

“Estates like Château Margaux or Harlan can plant additional vineyards and increase production, but Romanée-Conti will never produce more wine than what can legally come from that single, defined vineyard,” Thompson adds. “As global wine awareness has grown, more restaurants and collectors are competing for the same finite number of bottles, which has inevitably driven prices higher.”

How high will prices go? It’s hard to say. There are avid buyers for three-, four-, five-figure bottles, and there will be as the quality remains high and the scarcity continues.

“I just don’t know where the top of the market is,” Strangis laments.

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