A Beautiful Day In Burgundy

After a short delay in blogging while sleep took priority I’m back to keep you up to date with the happenings of the wine family. In this episode we wake up to . beautiful day in Burgundy with some lovely sun. Not warm mind you but the sun makes you feel like you are floating above the ground.

A wander float into town to new Petit dejeuner and then a short trip (my reference was you could jog there so the family thought we were walking) to Chorey Les Beaune and Tollot Beaut. Initially Nathalie seemed reluctant and told us the place is not for tourists alors! But soon she realised we were deadly serious. But before that we pulled out our phones for pics of  their cellar that has a section that is approximately 250 years old.

Tollot beaut is 24ha, 4 villages and 16 wines. The company has never been split up. The family is all shareholders of the company and work together to keep it so. We tasted across the 4 appellations and chatted about life in Burgundy.

Lesson 

They’ve had street lights for 40 years. Inferring they are putting new ones in is not met with good humour.

I have to declare that I love these wines and have for a long time. So I shall avoid gushing but will say the style here is of freshness, a bit racy and power of fruit not oak. They are not world beaters but the are accessible and very drinkable. They did not disappoint. From Village to Grand Cru the wines elicited with many “mmmm’s” and enthusiastic nodding.

Lesson

Pronunciation in Burgundy. An ‘x’ is said as “ss”. Aloxe is Ah-Loss. Fixin is Fiss-ahrn. And they insist on their ‘o’s and ‘r’s.

Much chatting about the hardships of finding good food in town and beyond saw us settling in. To make us leave Natahalie gave us a mystery wine. Covered in cellar mold and unlabelled. Very exciting and quite flattering.

Lesson 

The Burgundians don’t seem to use a lot of descriptors of flavours in the wine. Nathalie said they do to describe faults but mostly it is a case of ‘I like this’ or ‘this is not to my taste’. Most importantly, if a wine is really good then there is no need to say anything at all. If we were to adopt this in Australia I fear it might make for some very silent wine dinners in the future

Seeing the famous vineyards

We left on a high and drove to Vosne Romanee to take tourist photos. It was kind of a lie to Nathalie when we said we’re not tourists. We were off to see the great vineyards. Take more photos.

Then go to the Abbaye de Citeaux.

Les Citeaux did reek of shit of cow and the gift shop wasn’t open. But this time my friends, my wine family happily walked around and then just sat in the van for over an hour so I could go and get a souvenir. With bated breath we waiting like tweens for 5SOS tickets and rushed the door with the girl, more spunk than monk, let us in. Alas there was no I heart Citeaux t-shirts. There was dice with religious instructing on each face. A lot of jewellery of books. And of course fromage. I settled for demi ou citeaux and a coaster type thing with grapes. We left for home and time for gigot de agneau: A giant leg of lamb.

What to do with a corked Bonnes Mares?

I made a nervous walk back to Place des Grand Cru in Beaune to see if he would replace a corked Bonnes Mares because Nathalie suggested he would. Without blinking he took the bottle and gave me another one. He did not even smell it. So I bought more wine. Ligier Belair Clos Vougeot for Citeaux. It was almost my wine of the trip. Chateau de Moulin-a-Vent for Anthony who declared Beaujolais as not a serious wine.

Then we settled down to a decidedly uncorked Domaine Bart Bonnes Mares 2006 that was dense and powerful. A Modot Chambolle Musigny Les Charmes 1999 1er Cru and the mystery wine. We discussed the merits, took our notes out to see if we could get the wine sussed. There was a broad range of ideas (of course) and when we did the unveil we saw it was Savigny Les Beaune 1er Cru Lalavieres 2002. It was universally agreed it was a treat beyond what we could have dreamed of.

Lesson 

The gentleman at Place des Grand Cru, whose family owns Amiot Serville, is well worth a visit. He twice spent under my budget to get me the best wine and he replaced a 10-year-old Grand Cru without tasting it.
STEVEN and Ant visited later in the week. He clued to the fact we were together and said “I thought I should taste it. It was very bad”.