Cuisine Bourguignonne: The Wine as Cooking Medium

Burgundy — the wine region of eastern France, home to Romanée-Conti, Gevrey-Chambertin, and Chablis — produces a cooking tradition in which the wine is not an ingredient alongside others but the primary medium through which flavour is achieved. Boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin, and escargots à la bourguignonne are the canonical preparations; each demonstrates the technique of wine as the cooking liquid that simultaneously seasons, colours, and provides the acid that makes long-braised preparations complex rather than merely rich.

The defining techniques of Burgundian cooking.

• Coq au vin (same wine-as-braise-medium principle applied to chicken), Italian brasato al Barolo (same wine-braise technique — Italian parallel), Korean galbi-jjim (same sweet wine-soy braise principle