It is going to be one of two options. Where it is precisely is what will make all the difference. Oh, and everyone else is going to do the exact same thing.

Welcome to Burgundy.

As you drive from Dijon to Beaune almost all you will see is vineyards. Occasionally they’ll be obscured by small clusters of stone buildings, an old church or a Chateau a couple kilometres away atop a hill, but primarily, vineyards.

You’ll frequently end up stuck behind a tractor that looks like someone shrunk and blew the middle out of. You could crouch down and let it drive right over you because they’re designed to drive down the vineyard rows without breaking or knocking the vines nor lines.

They only grow wine using two types of grape in the regions of Côte de Nuits and Côtes du Beaune; Pinot Noir for reds and Chardonnay for whites. The purpose of their growing is to express the ‘terroir’, the unique identity of the wine as created by the distinct microclimate the vines are growing in. Each vineyard and wine is unique, even when using the same grape and a few metres apart, separated only by hedgerows, paths or old walls.

The name on a bottle of Burgundian wine is it’s ‘climats’, the land parcel from which the wine was grown. The ‘Route des Grand Crus’ stretches 50km and is home to 1,247 of these climats. I am less concerned with the technical detail than I am with the work over several hundreds of years to create such a system.

A man named Emmanuel hosted us for a tasting and we had a few wines from various climats that we had driven near earlier in the day. They were all delicious, we asked him which was his favourite and he explained that it really does not matter and changes day by day. He spoke as though it was not really important what we thought of the wines. The wine growers weren’t trying to make a wine we would like best. What was most important was that the terroir of the wines was well represented, those factors that contribute to the wine in the glass before me, that gave it its unique character.

He called it identity. Were I a Burgundian I may have grown up with a greater love and appreciation for wine than I do. I did of course enjoy the trip but what I enjoyed most was this insight. I loved that each field was uniquely demarcated and that the wines grown there would be given the AOC of the climats, the ‘Appelation d’Origine Contrôllée’ which dictates that the land conditions where the wine was grown is of central importance to the wine itself. I appreciate that there is one grape for white in the region and one for red. There’s a simplicity in the winegrowing that is done in these communities.

The genius of the place is the distinct lack of innovation. The work is in service of highlighting and demonstrating what is already there. There is not a drive to create something new, the passion in the region exists to unearth and bring to light the identity of the thing in front of you.

I ran up a hill outside Beaune and looked at a map showing me the unique climats of every vineyard I could see in front of me. I looked to my right and there was a small rock, on it was etched ‘Les Tourons’. That was the name of this little vineyard in front of me, stretching just a few hundred metres down my line of sight.

In that vineyard was a man treading slowly down a row, looking at every single vine. No phone in hand, he paid me no attention, just checking each and every branch with no distractions. It amazed me whenever I looked at those vineyards as far as the eye can see that each vine would be tended to uniquely.

I doubt that man was out marketing bottles of ‘Les Tourons’, he was just tending to each of its vines, its identity.