Full Bodied Burgundy

Dominic Bliss reveals why it’s the right time to buy in this region of rolling countryside, gorgeous fortified towns, charming period properties – and robust reds

For decades we Britons have been drawn to Burgundy, lured by those two great French passions – food and wine. This is the home of boeuf Bourguignon, coq au vin, Dijon mustard, snails steeped in garlic, Chablis, Puligny-Montrachet, Beaujolais… you get the picture. Rather joyously it’s also home to some of the loveliest old housing stock in France. No wonder Brits regularly snap up period property across the region.

Burgundy’s Place in France

In the Middle Ages, the Duchy of Burgundy (or Bourgogne in French) was one of the wealthiest and most powerful states in all of Europe, controlling  huge tracts of territory that extended well beyond Burgundy into Picardy, Alsace, Lorraine and the Low Countries. At one point, during the Hundred Years’ War, it looked as if the Kingdom of France might become subsumed by Burgundy rather than the other way round.

Fast forward 600 years and modern-day Burgundy is now part of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region. Traditionally it comprises four départements: Yonne in the north, Saône-et-Loire in the south, Nièvre in the west, and Côte-d’Or in the east.

Yonne is dominated by its rolling countryside. It’s very agricultural, stretching right up to the edge of the Paris region, with Auxerre as its capital. Saône-et-Loire occupies the vineyard-rich area between the Saône and Loire rivers, with Mâcon and Chalon-sur-Saône its main cities. Nièvre, with its capital Nevers, is partly covered by the huge Parc Naturel Régional du Morvan. Finally, there’s Côte-d’Or, with its rising escarpment, the south-east-facing slopes of which give birth to some of France’s most famous wines. Both Dijon and Beaune fall within the latter.

Properties: An Overview

As with any French region, there’s a huge variety of period properties on offer, some already modernised, others ripe for conversion. Flush with cash? See if you have enough to impress the very confident estate agents in the region’s finest towns such as Vézelay, Ancy-le-Franc, Tanlay, Saint-Fargeau, Noyers-sur-Serein, Pontigny or Chablis.

If these risk blowing your budget, however, head away from the tourist areas and you’ll still find plenty of very pretty villages with gorgeous period stone houses.

The most popular département for both investors and holiday home-owners is Côte-d’Or, thanks to its world famous vineyards. Burgundy’s cheapest properties are normally found in the remoter rural areas of Nièvre. House prices rocket should you opt for spots near the most renowned vineyards or in well-preserved medieval villages. The towns of Dijon (with its university) and Beaune (with some rather chic townhouses) are both very popular.

Caroline Gigandet, who runs property agency Burgundy Home & Services (www.burgundy-home-services.com) sees the highest demand from buyers househunting in chic Beaune and Meursault. “There are beautiful period houses here,” she says. “Stone walls, wooden-beamed ceilings, fireplaces… lots of character.” A nice period house, with four or five bedrooms and a large garden, she says, might go for as much as €800,000. Gigandet has invested in Beaune property herself. As well as her main residence, she bought an old convent and converted it into a home that she now rents out to guests.

As for Benjamin Haas, director of estate agency Burgundy 4U (www.burgundy4u.eu), he has helped a large number of Anglophones purchase  refurbished period properties. “Prices vary in terms of location and view,” he says. “A smart, modern town apartment will cost around €300,000. If you’re lucky, you can get them for less. But then you need to invest to bring them up to date. The further you are from the vineyards, the lower prices become. For €300,000, at 30 minutes from the main vineyards, you can expect a large garden and maybe even a swimming pool. In the Parc Naturel Régional du Morvan, mostly within the Nièvre département, with its lakes and forests; or the Bresse area towards the Swiss border, where it’s flatter and criss-crossed by rivers, €300,000 can buy you a farm with a hectare or more of land.”

However, it’s worth noting that the Parc du Morvan is a protected area and properties within its boundaries fall under strict planning laws.

If Haas was investing in property himself, he says he’d opt for what he calls “the Golden Mile”: the villages south of Beaune such as Pommard, Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet. “These are still well known for their wine, they have restaurants and basic shops, but they’re away from busy Beaune, and from the main road and railway that comes down from Dijon.” He points out how the Côtes de Nuits and Côte de Beaune vineyards (known as the ‘Burgundy Climats’) are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. “This ensures the area and its buildings keep their traditions. So, no supermarket square blocks here, or electricity lines spoiling the vistas. Even McDonald’s had to set up shop outside the area to respect these tough rules.” Burgundians have become extremely protective of their vineyards in recent years. It’s safe to say they’d rather see their precious grapes wither on the vine than allow foreigners to get their grubby mitts on them.

“Properties generally get passed down from generation to generation, making foreign ownership relatively rare,” says Laurent Jouvin from the website Wine Ponder (www.wineponder.com). “Vineyards normally sell as very small parcels of land, rather than entire estates. They’re rarely listed on the open market and command prices so high it’s enough to turn you teetotal.”

There are rare exceptions, however. In 2012, Chinese gambling tycoon Louis Ng Chi Sing paid a whopping €8million for the Château de Gevrey-Chambertin and its accompanying vineyard, totally outbidding the local winemakers. “What would the Chinese say if French investors bought up 10 or 50 metres of the Great Wall of China?” one defeated rival is reported to have said – once he’d stopped spitting blood.

Caroline Gigandet once sold a property with a small adjoining vineyard in the Côte-d’Or village of Monthelie to an English investor. “It was a beautiful character house,” she recalls. “The local winegrower in charge of the vineyards decided not to purchase it, and now the new English owners have 120 bottles of wine a year. They are very happy.”

Benjamin Haas explains how it’s near impossible for Brits to buy a vineyard. “Unless you have millions in the bank and can afford one of the major houses at €10 million and more, houses with vineyards at affordable prices are not available, even for the locals,” he says. “Usually they go from family to family and never reach the market. Even if you manage to buy a wine plot, you cannot exploit it yourself; you need to be a qualified wine farmer to get the right to exploit the vines. This can be done by hiring somebody in.”

If you don’t manage to bag a vineyard, however, there’s plenty of characterful period property elsewhere in this beautiful region to keep you more than happy.

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