Surrounded by its ramparts and bastions like a barrel by its staves, Beaune is the only city in the world where, as the architect Viollet-le-Duc said, you want to fall ill. Built in the middle of the 15th century by Nicolas Rolin, advisor to the Duke of Burgundy Philippe le Bon, the Hôtel-Dieu tells in flamboyant Gothic the romance novel of Burgundy and Flanders in the time of the Golden Fleece. Sister of Bruges, Beaune is the wine capital of Burgundy.

For centuries, the wine from the entire Côte de Beaune has been called “wine of Beaune”. From the beginning of the 18th century, the truly Beaunoise identity of the vintages gradually took shape to fully assert itself in the following century.

As the trade in Burgundy wine takes place mainly in Beaune, the city becomes very early in history the soul of this wine. Petrarch credits Beaune wine for the cardinals’s reluctance to leave Avignon for Rome. The Duke of Burgundy often sends the Pope barrels of Beaune wine to obtain his good graces. As local wisdom says, “Beaune wine only loses its cause for lack of comparison”. As early as 1728, Father Claude Arnoux wrote: “The different terroirs of Beaune produce wines that contribute Volnay and Pommard without having their faults”.