Pinot CountryEvents (5)

The third Sunday of November in Beaune: the hospital's barrels go under the hammer, buyers pay well over the market, and the trade reads the prices as a verdict on the vintage.

Burgundy's growers' festival, held in a different village each January — the confréries process, the village decorates its streets with paper flowers, and the cellars open.

A Chamber of Commerce restaurant fortnight built around the local barbecue — the valley's way of pointing visitors at the places that cook it.

Three days at Linfield College in McMinnville every summer since 1987: growers from everywhere pinot noir is grown, pouring beside each other under tents, with salmon grilled over alder on the Saturday.

A March weekend on the Santa Barbara coast where producers from Burgundy, Oregon, California and the southern hemisphere pour side by side — held at the ocean end of the county that grows the stuff.