This article is taken from the December-January 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

The soaring price of Burgundy is a perennial topic for wine writers. Back in 1986, Auberon Waugh was complaining about how his beloved Chambolle-Musigny Les Amoureuses was “villainously overpriced — largely, I suspect, because it is much sought after by rich Belgian businessmen on dirty weekends with their secretaries”.

Waugh didn’t realise he was living in a comparative paradise, because now it’s not just the Belgians who are after his favourite wine. The Americans, Japanese, Chinese and Russians have also discovered Burgundy. There’s too much money chasing limited quantities. Consequently, a bottle of Les Amoureuses from a producer such as Joseph Drouhin will cost about £600 or more.

It’s a similar story all over Burgundy, from the grand crus down to the humble Hautes-Côtes de Nuits. But there is one little area that has been entirely neglected by affluent businessmen. Get your magnifying glass out, Asterix-style, and focus on the area to the west of Chablis. Here you will find the wine lover’s Holy Grail — a source of good quality inexpensive red Burgundy.

According to Patrick Matthews, the area around the towns of Tonnerre and Épineuil used to supply Paris via the river Yonne and the Seine, until the railways brought cheap southern wines to the capital. When phylloxera, the vine eating louse, struck at the end of the 19th century, Northern Burgundy (Chablis aside) became a vinous backwater.

Matthews is a former wine writer and author of one of my favourite books on the subject The Wild Bunch, who now runs a chain of falafel stands and cafes in London called Hoxton Beach.

In the last few years he’s begun importing wine for his venues and a few private clients, focusing on this neglected part of Burgundy. The wine that first brought him to the region came from Coulanges-la-Vineuse, an obscure appellation that Waugh, to his credit, championed back in the 1980s.

Whilst cheap wines from the Côtes de Nuits often taste thin and green, Pierre Herouart’s 2022 which I tasted recently was juicy and opulently fruity. Matthews had no idea how a wine so ripe was created that far north. The price is ridiculous, under £15 a bottle.

More serious and less obscure is the Irancy Palotte 2019 from Benoît Cantin — think wild strawberries and leather with a bit of grip to it. I’m not altogether sure what price Matthews is going to do this for, but it’s likely to be under £25 a bottle (I’d recommend emailing him at [email protected] as his website isn’t that easy to navigate).

In America, this will set you back $50 from Kermit Lynch, a prestigious wine merchant based in Berkeley, California. Matthews admitted, “I should do a better job of selling it because I’m very privileged to import Benoît Cantin.” This producer also makes a light, unpretentious passe-tout-grains made from a blend of gamay and pinot noir. It’s exactly the sort of bistro wine you can imagine Parisians knocking back before the coming of the railways.

I’ll be honest, part of me wants to keep wines like this a secret: if too many people find out, prices are likely to rise. But I’m sharing because it’s important that merchants keep bringing them into the country.

Matthews isn’t the only man in the bargain Burgundy game. There’s also Tom Innes at Fingal Rock in South Wales who was a contemporary of Matthews at Oxford.

A former lawyer, he set up as a wine merchant in 1987 specialising in the more affordable bits of France. It was a 2009 Bourgogne-Épineuil from Domaine Maroslavac-Léger tasted at his annual London event that first turned me on to the magic of north Burgundy. As in England, global warming has been largely positive for viticulture there. He explained: “When I first started buying Épineuil it was very pale but now the wine has terrific colour and fruit.” The 2019 I tried in October was so ripe it almost tasted like something fancy from Tasmania.

Innes has also found wines from further south that are worth your time, such as Mercury and Givry in the Côte Chalonnaise or Maranges in Côtes-de-Beaune. I was particularly taken with a sweetly meaty Maranges Premier Cru La Fussière 2018 from Claude Nouveau.

Sadly, the domaine seems to have something of a curse on it. Claude Nouveau killed himself a few years ago. His son-in-law took over and lost a leg when a piece of machinery fell on him. It’s like something from Émile Zola.

Fingal Rock mainly supplies the general public, though he does have some trade customers like Cloth in Smithfields, which had the restaurant critics all hot and bothered recently.

It’s a one-man business and “margins are extremely thin”, which explains his Épineul coming in at under £20 and the Maranges just above (go to www.pinotnoir.co.uk for more details).

Beware, he warned, prices might not be so low forever: “Each time I rebuy I have to pay more for the next vintage.” So, it’s worth stocking up before the brutal effects of October’s budget are felt. At least you’ll have something good to help you weather the coming economic storm.