November 23

We drove out this morning toward Abbaye de Fontenay in the north of Burgundy. Off to a late start and while driving, I thought to call ahead and schedule some other rendez-vous for the day.

I managed to contact someone at Olivier Leflaive in the village of Puligny Montrachet and got us a spot for a 12:30 lunch and tasting which seemed irresistible. We passed some time driving through vineyards and graveyards in Pommard and Puligny on the way. 

The sky was overcast and wet, the mud like glue, the vines all naked and tied to trellises, some unpicked, withered grape clusters still clung to them all these weeks after the harvest. Workers were out in the vineyards in the bracing cold and the mud preparing the vines for the next season; pruning for next year’s grow and burning the old vines and clippings on the edges of the rows or in wheelbarrows. The lightly sweet, smoke of the fires is a welcome sight and reminds every one of a new season to come.  

 The graveyards are old. They have family plots dating back centuries, many of the graves and mausolea at the heart of the graveyards listing family names of the local vintners, who have been central figures in the villages for all this time. In the graveyard at Puligny Montrachet, the Leflaives (who we would visit for lunch) were at the epicenter. Some of the graves dating back a century or more, some as recent as this decade or this year.

Olivier Leflaive was a modest man considering his stature there and the project that with his brother and daughter he has undertaken. The family has run a restaurant across the Place de la Republique in the center of town for decades, but 4 years ago, they bought this building on the site of a former winery cave, and made it into a hotel. La Maison de Leflaive. He said that he named it that because he wants to welcome guests there as to his house. 

While listening in to our luncheon host Simon expound on the AOC system, the merits of the different parcels in which they own land, recent revolutions in enclosures (corks), the aspects of barrel aging and various other local industry ephemera, we tried all 14 wines; 10 chardonnays, 1 aligote (a little-known Burgundian white, not to my taste) and 3 pinot noirs, all while dining on some home-made cheese puffs, tuna terrine with chardonnay jelly and smoked salmon, chocolate mousse. Apparently Darren doesn’t like white wine, still he liked 6 of the whites.

We lingered around talking with another couple from San Francisco about how easy it is to get lost out here or to wind up with a rental car you can’t drive. Earlier I had met the Editor of Decanter Magazine. He was there doing research to hire some new contract writers and to know what topics are hot. I overheard him in conversation saying to Olivier that he contracts none other than Stephen Spurrier, organizer of the 1976 Judgment of Paris, the event that put California wines on the worldwide map.

We wanted to buy one of their grand cru wines and one of their prestigious 1er cru wines, but they didn’t have any available for us, and encouraged us to try to find them through their american distributor. This happens a lot out here. 

Approaching the wine industry as an amateur is in this way I’ve found to be a humbling experience. Many of the best wineries here will not offer tasting even with an appointment or reservation. Never. Their wines are “only for their clients”, of which they simply do not need or want any more of than they already have. Period. Since I had come up against this challenge weeks ago in trying to schedule visits, I hadn’t even bothered to schedule in Burgundy. Fortunately with some persistance and a list that includes not only top producers, we managed to get in some decent places.

Next we drove off toward Beaune intent on walking around the city a bit and taking in the sights. While driving through Pommard, we decided that since we loved the wines from there so much, why not stop at the Chateau. 

The Chateau de Pommard is an imposing and superb complex of 18th century structures with a substantial walled garden, originally built for one the secretaries of Louis XVI. Chateau de Pommard has a few kilometers of caves under the complex and a museum/shop in back of the inner courtyard.  

There was an exhibit of estate-owned Picasso ceramics and paintings, free with tour and tasting. Um, I think this woman is urinating. 

 Here's Darren climbing down into the musty depths.

They still stack them here with wedges.

The guide, Vincent, a local from Beaune, showed us through the cellars telling various points about the winemaking process, that supposedly set Chateau de Pommard apart from all others. The Chateau owns the largest contiguous plot of vinyard in Pommard, about 19 hectares, and produces one single wine from it, a Pinot Noir. 

So we were offered a vertical tasting of three different years; 04, 07 and 08. They were dramatically different from one another in tannic structure and the ’07 was very good. Unfortunately, since the winery has zero distribution and sells only through the estate, they would only ship in quantities of six or twelve bottles, not worth the expense for us. Vincent also gave us a taste of their Mar de Pommard, a distillate that he compared to Grappa. It was so strong, I think it burned the hairs out of my nose just smelling it. I like grappa, ouzo, some other stuff like this. This one was too strong for me.

Next we said our goodbyes and drove into Beaune where we walked around for a while trying to shake off the cold.

November 22

Nolay is in the southwest of the Burgundy region, just barely in Burgundy at all. Our place is in an even smaller hamlet called Change. Our little home for these few days is Le Pigeonniere, named that after the pigeon’s roost that was or is here. Pigeon’s roosts were very serious architecture for 13 - 18th century France. They served the shared functions of communicating with far-off places and providing pigeon meat to keep folks fed. I know I went on about it yesterday. Here's a couple more pics. 

The architecture is very specific. There are many varieties of them; octagonal, round, square, some not much taller than a tall person standing on the floor inside can reach or with a small ladder inside, others spanning several hundred feet and with massive internal staircases, some separated from the house of the owner, some attached. Each has a unique and distinctive epi de faitage, an ornament in the center of the roof made of metal, ceramic, terra cotta showing the special place for the pigeons of that pigeonniere to stop flying. Boulin are the little cubbies built into the interior walls of the Pigeonnieres that welcome the pigeons to roost as you see above; some are made of wood panels, some dug out of the wall itself, others made from pottery. All pigeonnieres have a window facing south east in the direction of the rising sun, some south as well, all small enough so as to not let in the raptors. The major point of classification is the size; those with less than 400 boulin generally went under the radar of the local tax collector, and those with more than 400 for which the owners paid handsomely. The Abbaye de Fontenay has one of the most spectacular Columbier (a bigger pigeonniere, I guess).

We got up late and had breakfast in the pigeon roost. I got groceries and a baguette from the boulangerie in Nolay. We drove to Mersault and prowled around for a minute looking for a tasting room before wandering into Bruno de la Grange, I think, where we were hosted for a tasting of some of their production wines. Here's Darren with Sophie, the hostess. She's a little shy and just came in from working in the warehouse to host us.

We bought an inexpensive bottle, then drove off to the Chateau de Mersault.

The Chateau de Mersault was hosting a post- vente- du- vin luncheon, so there were a lot of suits and velvety clad partygoers there dripping out of one of the buildings as we drove past. I love this car.

I like this rooster.

 Here's my friend Sarah working in the vinyards there at Mersault, or her doppleganger.

 
Since everyone is so deprived of barrel cave photos.

The cantina is like the library of congress for wines.

 Here's Darren with a stash from his favorite village, Puligny de Montrachet (the T is silent).

The vente-du-vin is an annual wine auction put on by the Hospice de Beaune, a centuries-old hospital serving the community of folks with no money, orphans, children. Over the years, many landowners have dedicated parcels of their lands to the Hospice, who has hired winemakers to produce wines for them, which they sell at the vente du vin each year to raise funds to keep their hospital running. It’s a huge philanthropic event drawing people from all over France. We got here right in the aftermath of it. We did a self-guided cellar tour followed by a tasting with Simon, pictured below.

This is a favorite of both mine and Darren's.

The Chateau de Mersault contracts with various growers there in some of the more prestigious appelations in Burgundy to produce what proved to be really exceptional wines. 

By the end of the tasting, I think I had more than a dozen. We stayed so late into the afternoon at the Chateau that all the restaurants and cafes were closed. Important to bear in mind; in the countryside of France, people only eat at specific times. Outside of that, we’re on our own. We managed to find a decent place to eat where Darren ordered snails and boeuf bourgignone and I had a pizza. We made it an early night.       

     

November 21, Champagne to Burgundy

This morning, we got up early and left the Hotel Briqueterie en route for the town of Taissy, where we were scheduled to meet with the winemaker Stanislaus Thienot of the cutting edge Thienot Champagne House. 

We drove around the center of Reims to a suburban industrial park, no castles, no centuries- old underground caves, no tourist groups, no tour guide. Just us, and the winemaker’s son, Stanislaus. Here he is routing around in the winery for some fresh barely- fermenting wines for us to try; two pinot noirs, two chardonnays and a pinot meunier, mostly all spitters as they say in the apple world. 

The fact that a winemaker can actually taste at this stage and predict is pure wizardry. Here's Darren responding.

An extremely gracious, young man, and thoroughly knowledgeable about the Champagne Industry here in Champagne; who are the leaders, what are the trends, what has the champagne been doing for the last 20 years and what is Thienot Champagne now poised to do with their stuff. Here's a pic of me and Stan, he's the son of the winemaker.

The winery was an impressive, completely up-to-date facility, super clean and with dozens of vats of varying sizes split into two primary sections; one section of more and smaller vats for the more precisely and more diversely blended Thienot (winemaker) labels, and one section of larger vats for the more classic Canard du.... . Thienot Champagne House is also the owner of Joseph Perrier Winery, a centuries old winery in the neighboring town of Chalons where we visited the day before. 

We sampled a flat, primary -fermentation-complete Chardonnay, a second-phase malolactic fermentation pinot noir, and two separate Pinot Meuniets of dramatically different character, none of it filtered or fined. all of it very young and not ready for the bottle, all of it to give us an idea of the enormous skill of the chef du cave in predicting what qualities will emerge years down the line from these incredibly sour, sharp and undrinkable juices.

We talked of vinyard politics, philosophy of yield and just about every thing I could imagine about the art and business of making champagne. None of the 3rd in-the-bottle fermentation takes place there in the facility. They do all of that at his father Alain’s house underneath the house. 

Stan then took us to the tasting room to sample some of the finished product. I was astonished at what happened. We bought some to bring along on our trip, and got contact info for the US distributor in San Francisco. 

Then drove off wishing Stan a warm farewell. Had some lunch on “Le Petit Seine” a riverboat turned restaurant and jazz club on the outskirts of Reims, before hitting the road for Vezelay. Got to Vezelay after sundown, visited some antique shops and the basilica.

Here's the basilica at Vezelay, shot at night with no flash?

 Here's a bag of garbage in front of the basilica at Vezelay, a very special bag of garbage, shot with a flash.

Then headed off for Nolay de Change. We have a house here called Le Pigeonniere, because they bred pigeons here for carrying messages and for the meat.

We had the whole house to ourself. They put the bed together but still gave us separate comforters. Catholic country.

Here's the actual pigeon house they named the place for.

Had dinner at the eatery up the block and then turned the manager on to some of the leftovers from the Thienot experience. Turns out our manager is a grapegrower himself and offered us some of the Sparkling Burgundy White he grows the grapes for. It wasn’t good. But I was grateful anyway and happy to chat a bit before hitting the sauna back here at the pigeon roost. Off to bed now. Later! 

November 20

I woke up a little early and went downstairs to scope out the spa while Darren got up later and got ready. He takes his time getting ready. I had been up during part of the night, since I am still a bit jet-lagged. So it wasn’t too weird for me to be up early wandering the hallways in a robe. I found this thing called a hamam, it’s like a steam sauna. I like it! Sat in there for a bit, then back up to get ready for the day.

Our first appt, Joseph Perrier in the small town of Chalons. We were extremely late, and only managed to talk our way in at the gate with a lot of finagling. Since it was Saturday, the Champagne House was closed. There was a special tour guide from the chamber of commerce there conducting the tour, only in french. Everybody's in jackets. It's cold! 

I was forced to translate for Darren. French is...a growth area for me. Here's Darren by the riddling racks.

For an old-style winery, they have some pretty up-to-date machinery.

Still I think we managed to have a good time on the tour, especially when the bubbly started flowing at the end. Between about six or eight of us and four bottles later, no one seemed to really care, or realize, what language anyone else was speaking. The champagne here is very good!

Afternoon appt back on Rue de Crayeres at Pommery. Now this place is the Disney of Champagne Houses. Where did the space ship come from? I think Breton has been here!

No friend of industry discount, turnstiles, placards, cash registers, dozens of guests even on a Saturday of the off-season. Probably helped that they were also gearing up for the Reims jazz festival. We were lucky enough to catch some brazilian jazz singer and a free jazz sextet warming up while we waited to start the tour, and for our tasting at the end. 

The tour guide was french, very funny. Kind of irreverent. Took us through dozens of chalk pits (crayeres) some with outrageous installation art pieces. There was an art installation exhibit all built into the crayeres. Bonus. Lots of caves had different names of cities on signs at the entrance, showing widow Pommery’s intention to conquer all the world’s markets little by little. There was an overhead tram system built into the caves shortly after 1880, I suppose they just borrowed the newfound wire cable technology for it from the mining industry in the comstock lode of the Sierra Foothills and a top - lighted model bottle showing the lees in the bottom.

There were also massive bas relief carvings in the chalk walls of the life of the widow Pommery and Bacchus, the God of wine. These sculptures were incredible. The pictures don't do them justice at all. 

 Lots of caves. This one locked has the oldest personal collection of the Pommery dynasty.

Including a bottle from 1874.

This is the biggest and most ornate wine cask i have ever seen.

After the tour, we walked back up the two hundred eighty some-odd steps to the reception area. The champagne was pretty good. We got the top-of-the-line tasting they had to offer, their Louise 1999 cuvee. Neither of us was really blown away by it, but we enjoyed the tour very much.

Too lazy to go wandering into the night, and knowing we were getting up early on the 21st, we had dinner back at Briqueterrie again. It did not suck....at all. It's a michelin-starred restaurant. Again they insisted on us eating three times more food than I could handle, and I couldn't resist because it was so good!