The Central Otago Burgundy Exchange: Co-fermenting cultures, transforming viticulture
Since 2006, winemakers from France and New Zealand have been trading places in an exchange programme that brings together two very different wine cultures. Kathleen Willcox finds out more and asks what are the results?
If strangers with wildly different histories and paradigms set out to complete a task together, what would happen?
This abstract thought experiment has been formally conducted in France and New Zealand since 2006.
France, and Burgundy specifically, has been producing some of the world’s most sought-after wine for two millennia. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay were born in Burgundy, and Cistercian monks created and refined the concept of terroir there.
New Zealand, meanwhile, is the youngest major wine-producing country in the world. Winemakers there are hailed for modernising the concept of terroir by infusing it with Māori values such as kaitiakitanga and tūrangawaewae, which links sustainability, and a deep human connection to place.
And we all know what they did with Savvy B…
Despite the stark differences, the global wine community is intimate, and Burgundy and New Zealand have been connected for decades.
How it started
‘In 2006, Sophie Confuron of Domaine Jean-Jacques Confuron came down to Central Otago for the first time,’ says Nick Mills (below), winemaker and general manager at his family estate, Rippon Vineyard, recalling the start of this co-fermentation of viticultures.
Get our daily fine wine reviews, latest wine ratings, news and travel guides delivered straight to your inbox.
He knew Confuron well and had spent years in Burgundy himself studying viticulture in Beaune and working as a cellar rat at Domaine Jean-Jacques Confuron, Nicolas Potel, Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and others.
‘We’d asked her to come down and present at the 2006 Central Otago Pinot Noir Celebration, on how the Cistercians’ beliefs and practices had advanced the notion of terroir,’ he explains.
The journey inspired Confuron to propose a student exchange between Central Otago and Burgundy.
The first official Central Otago Burgundy Exchange (COBEX) occurred in 2007, with a growers association and college in each region coordinating logistics.
Every year, wineries in each region agree to host stagiaires (interns) from abroad, providing them with the opportunity to experience a harvest and become immersed in the hosting region’s approach to farming, wine and culture.
The COBEX experience has had ripple effects on each region’s approach to viticulture and human culture.
Influence on viticulture
Stagiaires from Central Otago head to Burgundy to, ‘gain insight from the centuries of attention to specific vineyard sites, and the enormous history and respect for tradition there that a person from a very young country like New Zealand cannot fully appreciate until being fully immersed in it,’ says Carolyn Murray (below), general manager of the Central Otago Winegrowers Association.
Conversely, Burgundians arrive in Otago to discover what it’s like to work in a region devoted to fine wine, but without ‘detailed geographical and political overlays, and therefore free of the sort of constraints they have grown used to,’ Murray explains.
For Ben Leen, winemaker at Amisfield Winery, one of the stagiaires who descended on Burgundy in 2022, the experience was a revelation.
Feet on soil
‘Walking the vineyards with the owners, and being in places I’d only ever heard of discussed in hushed tones, like Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, gave me a deep understanding of the tapestry and layers of terroir,’ he says.
‘We would open wines from the parcel that we had just walked for context, and I understood everything at a much more micro level. It helped me approach terroir very differently when I returned,’ he adds.
Leen’s method shifted, and he began seeing a season in its totality, while allowing different sections of the vineyard to ‘speak’ to him.
‘I began to see how every square metre has a different personality, and a different way of responding and performing,’ Leen says.
‘No-one in Burgundy talks about pH or residual sugar. That was so revelatory. The knowledge and devotion to science is there, but the understanding of wine seemed deeper.’
Influence on human terroir
While Burgundy’s effect on Central Otago’s approach to physical terroir is arguably more pronounced, the opposite is true for human culture.
‘We are just floating in this vast ocean in New Zealand,’ says Mills. ‘There’s an incredible freedom of spirit. You can imagine almost anything happening. In Burgundy, it’s much more insular, with centuries of history.’
Cistercians built walls, created hierarchies and codified degrees, essentially, of holiness from site to site.
In Otago, the physical remoteness of the country imbues the people with a deep connection to their own personal plot of land, Mills argues, but also with the freedom to farm, cultivate and perceive it as they want to.
‘Central Otago is so free and youthful in comparison to Burgundy, and the stagiaires who come here to experience it return home with a new sense of openness,’ Mills says.
Close connections
The regions have also found opportunities to support each other emotionally and financially through their close-knit exchange.
‘Central Otago Winegrowers made a donation of €5,000 to the Association for the Restoration of the Abbaye de St-Vivant, where the very notion of terroir was seeded,’ says Murray.
‘And after the Christchurch earthquake, our friends in Burgundy sent rare, old and large format bottles of their wine to New Zealand, which we offered at auction and raised over NZ$40,000 for earthquake appeal.’
In practice, the thought experiment has yielded arguably better wine through a more precise approach to viticulture, and a more open approach to human culture.
It also fermented a long and unexpectedly symbiotic friendship, with impacts that ripple well beyond the world of wine.
The Central Otago Burgundy Exchange: the facts
The concept for the exchange was born in 2006.
It has been conducted every year since, with a two-year pause during Covid-19.
More than 100 stagiaires have travelled on the exchange.
COBEX is run by a grower association and an agricultural college on each side.
In Burgundy: Mosaïque Bourgogne International and the CFPPA de Beaune.
In New Zealand: Central Otago Winegrowers Association and the Otago Polytechnic Central Campus.
Related articles
- Burgundy winemakers head to England’s Essex for new ventures
- Why now is the time to embrace New Zealand Chardonnay
- Riesling star Erni Loosen launches Burgundy wine project
With her focus on wine, spirits, sustainability, travel and food, Kathleen’s writing has appeared in leading titles including Wine Enthusiast, The Spectator and Wine-
Searcher since 2009. Based in New York state, she regularly travels around the world and is co-author of Hudson Valley Wine: A History of Taste & Terroir.