Champagne hillsides, houses and cellars / “Climats” of the Burgundy winegrowing region [World Heritage #6]

To mark the occasion, the Association of French World Heritage Properties screened the animated film (subtitled in English) made to present World Heritage in France. 

On the web:

• 24 nouveaux sites inscrits sur la Liste du patrimoine mondial (UNESCO Centre du patrimoine mondial)
• www.assofrance-patrimoinemondial.org

Champagne Hillsides, Houses and Cellars

In the northeast of France, on cold, chalky lands too often ravaged by war, Champagne’s Hillsides, Houses and Cellars have an agri-industrial landscape all their own, combining the vineyards that supply the region with the villages and urban neighbourhoods where production and marketing activities are concentrated. 

The facilities required for Champagne wine production have generated a unique ternary organisation based on functional urban planning, prestige architecture and a subterranean heritage. The agri-industrial system that structures the landscape, along with the economy and everyday local life, is the result of a long process of spatial development, technical and social innovation, and industrial and commercial changes that have accelerated the transition from an artisanal culture to worldwide dissemination. 

It was here that the art for elaborating champagne was developed, to be disseminated and copied across the world from the 19^th century to the present day. 

On the web:

• www.paysagesduchampagne.fr
• Coteaux, maisons et caves de Champagne (Association des Biens Français du Patrimoine Mondial)

• Coteaux, maisons et caves de Champagne (UNESCO)

The “Climats” of the Burgundy winegrowing region (UNESCO)

The “Climats” of Burgundy’s winegrowing region are the living archetype of terroir-based vineyards, closely associating a wine’s gustative quality with the plot it originated from. 

In Burgundy, since the High Middle Ages and under initial impetus from the Benedictine and Cistercian monastic orders and Burgundy’s Valois dukes, identification of wines with the places they are produced was pushed to the extreme, resulting in meticulous cadastral division. 1247 “Climats”, plots of vines precisely delimited in accordance with their atmospheric, hydrographic and geological characteristics, cover the Côtes de Nuits and de Beaune, natural hillsides with clay-limestone soils of extremely varied composition, ranked in the Controlled Appellation of Origin (AOC) system. 

The site’s regulatory framework and economic life were organised under the impetus of the cities of Dijon and Beaune, centres of political, cultural, religious and commercial power. 

Today, Burgundy’s “Climats” constitute a unique living conservatory of thousand-year-old traditions, an expression of its terroirs’ diversity and a producer of wines of globally acknowledged excellence. 

On the web:

• www.climats-bourgogne.com
• Les Climats de Bourgogne (Association des Biens Français du Patrimoine Mondial)

• Les climats du vignoble de Bourgogne (UNESCO)
• Le bien public – Edition spéciale (09/07/2015)