Wine 101 is a wine podcast for the everyday wine lover. Once a week VinePair's tastings director Keith Beavers will breakdown everything from how wine is made to wine regions of the world in easy-to-digest fashion giving the listener the confidence they need on their wine journey.
Follow Keith on Instagram for episode previews and general wine lover musings @vinepairkeith
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Popular Clips
His predecessor or plural. I don't really know, but definitely his predecessor. He was very combative Duke. He was really big on expanding the Burgundian state all the way Flanders, which is, like, all the way northwest, like, through Champaign all the way north, and he wanted to do it through force and not diplomatic ways and means. And I don't wanna get further into this because it doesn't really matter, but what matters is at some point, all that all that ambition, all that hubris didn't work because at some point, He was overtaken by the French king at the time. And unless the Burgundian state is over and comes under French rule. Now, that's important because not only is the French royalty kind of getting rid of dukes and their semiautonomous law, they're also kinda getting tired of these priests and these monks. And as the monarchy begins to strengthen and power across France. The power of the church begins to decline. It doesn't happen overnight. Takes a long time. But it's happening. And in the general history of Europe, this is towards the end of the renaissance. The renaissance is generally between 14th 17th century. So you can kinda see this progression of the church being less important, not unimportant, but less important in a way that it had to occupy itself along with all of the progressiveness that is going on during the renaissance. And actually, if you go to Florence Italy, literally in downtown Old Town Florence, Italy, you can see the transition from the middle ages to the renaissance just by looking at church
Became regarded as second to none. This is where Burgundy's fame begins to I don't know. The seed is planted, if you will. And even though that papacy thing comes to an end in 13/77, the wines of Burgundy retained their high reputation. And there's this really interesting story here. Pope Orban, the second to last pope to do the thing. Well, he actually left and went back to Rome for 3 years after the first pope had left Rome for 60 years prior. And he actually went to Rome. I was like, look, this place is nuts. Its infighting is terrible. He was like, I don't wanna be here. I don't want this. And he peaces out back to Avignon, and then he eventually dies a couple days later. Really, really a couple days later because he gets he gets sick on the ship back to home, and then his successor, Gregory the 11th, becomes the last pope of this whole thing. Again, that's a whole story for another time, but that time between him leaving and getting home and dying, he receives a letter from a scholar and poet that's in Rome, kind of a guy who was part of the early Italian renaissance, Francesco Petracca. Some people just call him Petrarch. I don't really understand. Trying to persuade him to come back to Rome, But in that letter, he admits the best burgundy was not to be had south of the Alps. Therefore, understanding why he would wanna stay there. Not because of the land or the people, the wine. So a lot of things happened here. Right? We have some famous vineyards being established. We have the monks doing their work. We have terroir being realized. This is we're starting to feel burgundy. Right? We're not done yet, but we're feeling it. Right? Next week, let's talk about the Dukes. Oh my god. Let's start this week.
My name is Keith Beavers. I'm very lucky to be a Stephen King fan because almost all these new audiobooks by him are read to you by Will Patton. If you've ever had a book read to you by Will Patton, you know what I mean. What's going on, wine lovers and the Vinepear Podcasting Network? This is the wine 101 podcast. My name is Keith Beavers, and I am the tastings director of VineBear. We are here to talk about the next phase in the history of Burgundy, and it actually includes people called the Burgundians, but it's a little bit more complicated than that. Let's get into it. So you got Romans like, yo, wait, wait, wait. We do not like being invaded like this. We're gonna go and conquer you, and they did. That's why we have something called Roman Gaul, which the Romans occupied for centuries. Well, at least until the 5th century AD. Then things start to really change, and this is where we meet the Burgundians. Now, the interesting thing about this story, and I will tie it to wine, but I wanted to talk about the Burgundians because the whole place is named after them, and their role here is not really a wine role. It's more like a kingdom in transition role for the Merovingian dynasty. I know. I know. Let me explain. The Roman Empire disintegrates around the 5th century AD, but that's
Also Darby's seaside for the theme song. Listen to this. And I wanna thank the entire VinePair staff for helping me learn something new every day. See you next week.
