WITH the trees still up and the lights still twinkling, we're allowed to think about treats for a few more days. At the same time, there's that New Year urge to adopt a more vigorous (or rigorous) approach to life - picking up more challenges, learning more, working harder. Marry those two apparently incompatible impulses, and in wine lovers' terms, where do they land you? Into the heart of Burgundy - a magical place which is also a minefield.
I'm concentrating on red Burgundy, first because I think it's more difficult to get to grips with than white, and also because, wonderful as white Burgundy is, it is on the red wines particularly with their delicate nuances of flavour, poetic names and sky high prices, that the whole mystique of the region rests. At their ethereal best, they can represent the pinnacle of pleasure - causing even the most restrained, starchy types to launch into the language of passion to describe a sip or two as perfumed, silky, velvety, sensual seductive or downright sexy. They can also be thin and bitter disappointments.
On my first visit to Burgundy 10 years ago, I cycled from legendary village to legendary village on the Route des Vins, looking for bottles that would demonstrate all this liquid sensuality. I never found them - partly through ignorance, bad luck and inability to pay, but partly, I later discovered because Burgundy in the mid1980s was greedily meeting high international demand with dilute overpriced wines. Soon, Burgundy lovers rebelled - particularly in the US, a key market. They began to look elsewhere for wines that delivered better quality for less money. It was time for the Burgundians to throw away the laurels on which they had been reposing for some time and get real.
Progress seems to have been made. Back in Burgundy in late November for the famous Hospices de Beaune wine auction, I was struck by the fact that prices no longer seemed quite so scarifying, nor quality quite so elusive. Burgundy will never, ever be cheap.
The Pinot Noir grape is one of the trickiest to grow, and there can be no economies of scale where thousands of growers farm small strips of vineyard, tacked together like a pauper's patchwork quilt of, inestimable value. Nor will it ever be easy to navigate, with so many villages, growers and merchants. But my goodness, it can be spellbinding.
If you're used to drinking nothing but the best, at upwards of £25 a bottle, you're unlikely to need, "much guidance. For wine explorers on tighter budgets, the general consensus is that you won't taste much of Burgundy's excitement in Ireland for under £10; but for anybody who is prepared to venture the occasional £10 to £15, there are, definitely some wines which point, in their delicacy and complexity, towards the paradise that the great names promise.
To find them, it helps to know a little about the upheaval which the Burgundian wine business has undergone in the past decade or two. In the past, the key players in the trade were the negociants - the merchants, who would blends and bottle wines produced from the grapes of various growers.
Gradually, the balance of power has shifted to the growers. Many now produce excellent wines from their own individual domaines and are half way to being negociants themselves in the way they handle the international market. Some of the better traditional negociants, meanwhile, have bought vineyards so that they, too, can meet the current demand for wine that carries the imprimatur of one grower winemaker.
Besides pushing up quality, this trend puts a particular shape on Burgundy for beginners. To start off with, it's probably not a bad idea to concentrate on some of the most reliable negociants (bearing in mind that some familiar old names have totally changed their identity in the mergers and takeovers of recent years).
Jadot, Drouhin, Faivcley are among those who stand for quality, working as both merchants and growers. The next step is to become familiar with some of the most dynamic growers - names such as Jean Marc Boillot, Tollot Beaut, Armand Rousseau, Daniel Rion, Jacques Seysses of Domaine Dujac, Bruno Clavelier in Vosne Romance, and others which any Burgundy addicted wine merchant will willingly uncover. Many of the wines from producers such as these will set you back a lot more than £15, but they are worth aspiring to.