BEAUNE, FRANCE — Many vintages ago, the négociants, or wine brokers, were considered the big, bad guys of Burgundy. In their barrel rooms in this small city, they controlled the fortunes of hundreds of small growers, unilaterally setting the prices they would pay for wines or grapes. In some bad years or when the economy was depressed, they might decide to buy nothing at all.

That set off a gradual revolution in Burgundy in the first half of the 20th century, as more and more estates began to bottle and sell their own wines, cutting the négociants out of the loop. For Burgundy lovers, the declining power of the négociants was a boon. Wonderfully distinctive wines, displaying the intricacies of Burgundian terroir, were showcased by individual estates rather than blended into large quantities of decent but homogeneous wine.

As Burgundy has come to be prized the world over, many consumers have come to believe that individual Burgundy estates were small and good while négociants were big and bad, or at best second-rate.

No longer. The world of Burgundy has evolved remarkably in the last 30 years. The best of the big négociants, like Joseph Drouhin, Louis Jadot, Bouchard Père et Fils and Joseph Faiveley, are meticulous producers of top-quality wines and, in some cases, major landholders themselves. Just as significant has been the rise of the micro-négociant, wine merchants who generally make minute quantities of often superb wines with purchased grapes.