One can not, must not, pass these great enterprises by unnoted or with their praises unsung. Their histories are often as interesting as those of the _maisons de plaisance_ of the seigneurs who despised trade and robbed and grafted for a livelihood. Undoubtedly many of them did take the wide road to riches, for the feathering of political nests by the willing or unwilling aid of one's constituents is no new thing. The gatherers of the grape under the Burgundians and the Bourbons were not always the happy contented crew that they have so frequently been pictured on canvas. The novelists, the playwrights and the painters have limned the lily a little too strong at times. One judges of this from a chanson which has come down through centuries. "_Allons en vendagne pour gagner cinq sous_ _Coucher sur la paille, ramasser les poux_ _Manger du fromage qui pue comme la rage._" It was said in the good old days that the grape-pickers were wont to eat as much as eight kilos of the grapes a day, to say nothing of drinking three litres of wine,--manifestly they were not so badly off, even at a wage of only five sous for a whole day's labour. South from Dijon the itinerary through the core of the Côte d'Or passes in review a succession of names which one usually associates only with a wine list. If one has studied the map of France closely the surprise is not so great, but for many it will come as something unexpected to be able to breakfast at Chambertin, lunch at Nuits, dine at Beaune and sleep at Mersault or Nolay. First off, on leaving the capital of the dukes, almost within sight of its palace towers, one comes to the great wine district of Chénove, and more than all others of this region it is to be revered by the lover of the history and romance of feudal lords. Sheltered, and almost enwrapped by the mountain background, it sits on the edge of the sunny plain where once the Ducs de Bourgogne marshalled their armies and their courtiers. Not one of the very first wines of the Côte d'Or Chénove comes from the bright particular vineyards or _closes_ of the Burgundian dukes. Their ancient cellars and _cuviers_ are still existent but the wines matured in them are to-day the growth of American roots, planted in the last dozen or twenty years to take the place of those destroyed by the phylloxera, the grafted stocks serving to give that classic body and flavour which have made the Burgundian _crus_ famous. Thus the favourite axiom is proved that it is the soil and not the grape which makes fine wine.