Burgundy Trade Structure

• Negociants (merchants)
• Domaines (growers)
• Co-operatives (esp. Chablis, Maconnais)

Historically, owners of small, fragmented vineyards found it uneconomic to make, bottle and market their own wine. Instead, they sold it to the big merchants, called negociants, usually based in Beaune or Nuits St. Georges, who would blend, bottle and market the wine to a world-wide market.

Over the past 30 years an ever-increasing number of growers are bottling their own wine, as price rises have made it economically viable to do so. Nowadays, it is generally recognised that the very best wines come from domaines, the Burgundy term for a grower's vineyard holdings.  

However the major negociants are almost all significant land owners and have increasingly been concentrating on the production from their own vineyards, while many growers, unable to buy more vineyard, have been meeting growing demand by buying in some grapes and thus becoming small scale negociants.

The co-operative movement developed in the 1930s and has an important role in the less expensive parts of Burgundy. There are good co-operatives at Viré and Lugny (Maconnais), Buxy (Chalonnais) and Chablis.