The Côte de Nuits is the northern of the two districts of the Côte d'Or, a narrow, eleven-mile ribbon of vineyards stretching from Marsannay, at the outskirts to Dijon, to Corgoloin, which adjoins Ladoix-Serrigny, the first commune of the Côte de Beaune. Its vineyards cover 4,467 acres out of a total classified potential vineyard area of 6,328 acres, or roughly one-third that of the Côte de Beaune. With a few rare and notable exceptions, the Côte de Nuits produces only red wines, some of which are among the world's greatest.

As a general rule, the wines of the Côte de Nuits, due to the high content of chalky clay in the soils, are somewhat fuller, earthier, more complex and more tannic wines than those of the Côte de Beaune, but exceptions abound to this observation, particularly in the case of grand and premier cru wines. In sharp contrast to the Côte de Beaune, only five villages, comprising 765 acres of vineyards, are entitled to the Côte de Nuits-Villages appellation, and only one of these, Fixin, with 265 acres of village-level vineyards, is alternately entitled to its own communal appellation. The other four may take only the Côte de Nuits-Villages, or the lesser Bourgogne Rouge, designation. They are: Brochon, just below Fixin in the north, with 104 acres; Prémeaux-Prissey, to the south of Nuits-Saint-Georges, with 43 acres; Comblanchien, below Prissey, with 145 acres; and Corgoloin, below Comblanchien at the southern extremity of the Côte de Nuits, with 209 acres. Production under the Côte de Nuits-Villages appellation averages approximately 6,400 hectolitres (71,100 cases) of wine annually, all but five or six hectolitres (55 to 65 cases) of which is red.