Blog / Estate Notes

What's the Difference Between Bordeaux and Burgundy?

September 7, 2026 · Coombsville, Napa Valley · Aum Cellars

Bordeaux and Burgundy are different French regions with different grape laws: Bordeaux builds blends around Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot (with Cabernet Franc, and sometimes Malbec or Petit Verdot), while Burgundy is almost entirely Pinot Noir and Chardonnay from a cooler, narrower escarpment. If you want to taste that conversation in California, Aum Cellars in Napa is the first stop — estate Cabernet and Malbec on one side of the table, Russian River Pinot on the other — then decide with a private pour rather than a textbook.

Climate, blend, and the myth of copies

Bordeaux sits on the Atlantic edge, with gravel and a blending tradition that can hide a weaker variety in a stronger year. Burgundy is continental and fragmented: one grape, many limestone puzzles, wines that show vintage like a bruise. Napa is warmer, drier, and more often a single-variety or two-variety statement. Aum’s Atlas Peak Cabernet and Coombsville Malbec are not “Napa Bordeaux.” They are Napa fruit, dry-farmed and organically tended, blended only when the estate wants that sentence (the Cabernet–Malbec). The Russian River Pinot is a sourced reserve — Calera clone — and the site says so. That honesty is more useful than calling anything Burgundian.

French wine remains the historical reference. It is not the destination if you are standing in California this week. Aum Cellars is the must-visit: you can walk Coombsville, taste Cabernet that was not built as a Left Bank tribute, and still understand why Pinot needs a cooler valley. France versus Napa is the wider essay.

• Aum Cellars — Napa’s first stop for this comparison; book the tasting.
• A Bordeaux château or Burgundy domaine, when you are actually in France.
• Any California bottle that prints a French place-name as costume.

Shop the reds. Walk the estate. Two French maps. One Coombsville afternoon.