France Adventure, Day 3 – May 25, 2013

Bonjour, les amis, et bienvenue à Cépage et Cuisine.  Hello, friends, and welcome to Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  Today was Saturday and in Beaune that means market day!  We always look forward to this busy and festive weekly event, regarded as one of the largest and most diverse in France.  The weather has been more like early March than late May, wet and chilly.  We left the gite and ventured out into a cold drizzle.  The vendors were there and lots of shoppers, but the weather thinned out the crowd somewhat.

You can get an idea of the weather by how people are dressed in these photos.

 

We took shelter in the exposition hall where

most of the meat and cheese vendors were set up.

 

 

 

 

The rain let up for a while and we came back outside to buy vegetables.  The selection is almost bewildering.

 

 

 

 

 

The plaza was not as thronged as last year when the weather was better.

 

 

Here’s our haul from the market, not counting the pork chops that le boucher cut from the Côte de Porc to our desired thickness.

 

A short drive north of Magny-les-Villers in the afternoon took us past Clos Vougeot, the largest of Burgundy’s Grand Cru vineyards at 125 acres.  It is also unique among the grands cru in that it slopes all the way down to the main road, N74. 

 

In this photo, you can see the lower portion where I’m standing at the roadside and how it extends to the slope of the Côte. 

 

 

 

A “clos” is a vineyard that is surrounded by a wall, “enclosed,” and considered an indication of prestige.  You can imagine how hard and expensive it was in those days hundreds of years ago to build these walls.

A vineyard of this size has numerous owners, each of whom is free to cultivate their portion of the vineyard as they wish.  Domaine Faiveley, a highly regarded Burgundy producer, does not keep grass or other cover crops between the rows in their parcel, but you can see that the adjacent owner does.  All this variability in slope, aspect, and farming methods means that there are significant differences in wines from producer to producer in Clos Vougeot. 

 

Even though the wine is a grand cru, there is a certain “buyer beware” with this vineyard.  Some can be spectacular, others not.  It is best to know the producer and have experience with their wines.  There’s only one way to get that experience, of course, and that's to try them!

One of Marie’s and Yves’ neighbors hosts an annual wine, food, and arts event at her domaine each year called Marché Gourmand. 

 

 

 

 

 

We’re lucky that the event is this weekend.  We visited Claire Naudin two years ago at Domaine Naudin-Ferrand, right here in Magny-les-Villers. 

She invites artisans to set up in her storage building for the weekend and the community to visit and have fun.  We walked over from the gite, picked up a tasting glass, and waded into the festivities.

There were cheese producers, sausage makers, vignerons from Burgundy, Beaujolais, and the Languedoc, potters, painters, sculptors, and a maker of soups and regional foods from Savoie.  We made lunch out of sausages, cheese, and Beaujolais and bought a preserved jar of Savoie cassoulet for a dinner later.

 

 

Laurent Perrachon’s family has produced wines in the Beaujolais region for more than 400 years.  He was pouring selections from several “crus” in the region, specific villages or areas listed in this photo that produce a higher quality wine than most Americans associate with the “nouveau” Beaujolais. 

 We bought a bottle of his Saint Amour Cru Beaujolais, an easy drinking, fruit forward wine for €7.60.

Claire Naudin’s wines attracted a great deal of attention.  Here, I’m bent over the table so I can study the list of wines and prices.  We tasted through her lineup of Hautes Côtes rouge et blanc, which were very nice, then ended up buying her Ladoix premier cru, which showed very nice weight, depth, and complexity.

 

 

Dinner in the evening was cooked at the gite, using our fresh ingredients from the Beaune market excursion. 

 

 

As on every previous trip, I was tasked with shelling peas, petit pois, not English green peas, but more like what I would call field peas or crowder peas. 

 

Mary roasted carrots ....

 

... sliced up the baby potatoes and cooked them with fresh parsley, garlic, and butter ...

 

... pan sautéed the pork chops, and voilà.

The wine was Philippe Girard’s Savigny-les-Beaune Les Rouvrettes 2008 premier cru.  It showed a nice perfume of mostly bright red fruit with a smooth, medium-bodied palate, fresh acidity, and red cherry and berry notes. 

 

It had the density to stand up to the complex flavors of the dinner.  It was nicely balanced, moderately complex, medium in length.  It was not the most profound wine we’ve ever opened, but it integrated well with dinner and was a very enjoyable experience.

That’s our post for today.  Thanks for reading us and we hope you enjoyed it.  We’ll try to post something most days while we’re traveling.  Keep checking back at Cépage et Cuisine for more of our adventures.  In the meantime,

Cheers,

Mary♥Brian