Tales of an Amorphic Destiny

Burgundy

July 4th, 2007 at 02:06pm James

After a few days getting hot, dirty, smelly and a little tipsy at Magny-Cours for the French Grand Prix, we thought it’d be best to go somewhere relaxing for the next leg of our trip. We ended up in the Burgundy region, famous of course for its wine and also for having a colour named after it.

We spent a couple of nights in a very well-appointed campground, built in the grounds of an old Châteaux. In the intervening day we took advantage of the campground’s bicycle hire service and set out in search of wine.

Unfortunately the weather wasn’t on our side and we had to stop once or twice to shelter from the rain. Fortunately for us, one of these stops was in a small local pub in the nearby town and as luck would have it the "Plat du jour" was local specialty Beef Burgundy. The publican was an older gentleman who spoke no English at all but we’d been brushing up with "Learn in Your Car French" and so soon enough he presented us with an enormous platter of delicious beef stew, accompanied by shoestring chips and of course, vin rouge.

We braved the weather once more and with a little help from the sat-nav, (yes I took it with me just in case we got lost) we ended up at the tiny cellars of Domaine du Merle.

This boutique winery is run by a couple of locals and one of them, Michel, kindly took us around for a tour. He showed us where the wine is first pressed and initially fermented, before being stored in enormous barrels for aging.

Michel grows all of his own grapes in his local vineyard and then bottles and even labels the wine himself. Apparently this small-scale production is usual for the region and this is one of the reasons that wine from Burgundy is less common than that from other regions in France.

We said goodbye to Michel and with a couple of bottles of his delicious Bourgogne safely stowed we rode back to base. The rain was even worse on the way back, but fortunately the campground’s facilities included a jacuzzi  which helped us recuperate after the day’s exertions. There’s a couple more pics of Burgundy here.

Entry Filed under: Europe