Burgundy labels read top to bottom in a specific order. Once you know what you’re looking at, the system is simple: vintage, producer, vineyard, classification.

1. The vintage.

The year the grapes were picked. Burgundy is a region where vintage matters enormously — a great producer in 2017 will make a different wine than the same producer in 2018. The vintage usually appears prominently near the top of the label or on the neck capsule.

2. The producer.

This is the most important word on the bottle. In Burgundy, the producer matters more than the appellation in almost every case. Hubert Lamy Saint-Aubin and a generic Saint-Aubin from a négociant are not the same wine. The producer is usually labeled as Domaine [Name], Maison [Name], or simply the name of the family or estate.

If the label says Mis en bouteille au domaine or Mis en bouteille à la propriété, the wine was bottled at the producing estate. If it says Mis en bouteille par [Name], it was likely bottled by a négociant who bought the grapes or wine from someone else.

3. The vineyard or village.

Burgundy is divided into appellations from broad to specific:

• Bourgogne — anywhere in the region. Entry level.
• Village (e.g. Volnay, Puligny-Montrachet) — grapes from a specific village.
• Premier Cru — a specific vineyard within a village, named after the village (e.g. Volnay 1er Cru Champans).
• Grand Cru — the top tier. Just the vineyard name, no village (e.g. Chambertin, Montrachet, La Tâche).

4. The classification.

If the wine is a 1er Cru or Grand Cru, the label will say so explicitly: Premier Cru, 1er Cru, or Grand Cru. If neither phrase appears and the label names a village or just Bourgogne, you’re below those tiers.

A worked example.

Take a typical premium label:

2022
Domaine Hubert Lamy
Saint-Aubin 1^er Cru
En Remilly
Mis en bouteille au domaine

Read it: 2022 vintage. Producer: Domaine Hubert Lamy. Village: Saint-Aubin. Classification: Premier Cru. Specific vineyard: En Remilly. Bottled by the producer themselves.

A few useful Burgundy terms.

Monopole. A vineyard owned entirely by one producer. The most famous is La Romanée from Domaine du Comte Liger-Belair. Salon’s “S” is the only champagne that operates on this principle for an entire grand cru village.

Cuvée. Specific wine. A producer might have several cuvées from one village, named after the parcel.

Climat. A specific named vineyard plot. Used interchangeably with lieu-dit in casual speech.

Côte de Nuits / Côte de Beaune. The two main subdivisions of the Côte d’Or. Côte de Nuits is mostly red (Gevrey, Vosne, Nuits-Saint-Georges). Côte de Beaune is split — great whites (Puligny, Chassagne, Meursault) and great reds (Volnay, Pommard, Beaune).

That’s the whole system. From here, every bottle on the shelf reads as a sentence rather than a code.