France Adventure, Day 5 – May 27, 2013 – Chablis Day

Hello, friends of food and wine.  Bonjour, les amis de la cuisine et du vin.  Welcome to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  Or should I say, hello to friends of Mary in the Canola.  Mary’s Facebook photo for our Lazy Sunday post got lots of likes and comments.  Thanks for the affirmation and for reading our blog.

The sun is shining and the temperature is pleasant!  It has been cold and wet here in Burgundy, so a day like today is a welcome respite.  Yves came outside to greet us with a big smile.  Il fait du soleil!  The sun is shining! 

 

Here's a photo of Marie’s and Yves’ house, which is on the property with the gite where we are staying.  The picture at the top of the post is their back yard.  The photo below shows pansies growing from between the rocks on the wall of the stairs leading to their door. 

 

If you’ve been reading the blog, you’ve surmised that gite is what we call a vacation rental house or cottage in English.  It is pronounced with a soft “g” sound, like “zheet.”  These are often a good value and can be fully equipped.  Ours has a complete kitchen with a four burner cooktop, oven, dishwasher, washer and dryer, two bedrooms, two baths, Internet access, linens, everything we need.  Magny-les-Villers is about a 10 minute drive to Beaune where all necessary amenities can be found.  The cost for nine days is €550, which translates to about $720 at the current exchange rate, about $80 per day.  Can’t beat that.

Today was Chablis day.  We always plan a day to drive to this northernmost region of Burgundy, about an hour and a half up the A6 AutoRoute from Beaune.  It is also about the northernmost region of France where grapes for premium still wine will ripen.  Alsace is at about the same latitude.  Champagne is farther north, but produces only sparkling wine.

We love visiting Chablis.  Mary loves the vibe of the place, the small town atmosphere, the architectural style, the white, chalky soil and appearance of the structures.  Chablis produces only white wine, only from Chardonnay, from vines grown on soil called Kimmeridgian.  The area was under water in ancient times and the soil is composed of limestone from decaying fossilized sea shells.  The soil, along with the climate and other characteristics, conveys a fresh, minerally, citrusy, highly perfumed quality to the wines.  The wines are usually vinified without much oak barrel influence so the mineral and fruit notes come through more clearly.  Another nice thing about the wines of Chablis is their value in comparison to many of the great white Burgundies, which can be expensive.

Our only tasting appointment of the day was at Domaine Louis Michel (pronounced like Louie Michelle), a well-known but still fairly small producer in Chablis.  Like many Burgundy estates, the domaine has been in the same family for generations, nearly 200 years.  Their wines see no oak barrels at all, only stainless steel tanks.  The style of wines is classically Chablis, crisp, clean, with fresh acidity, stony minerality, and citrus and tree fruit notes. 

Pascale tasted us through the wines, progressing from Chablis village to premier cru.  Recent vintages have produced low yields because of the weather, so she could not pour any of the grand cru wines.

 

For lunch, I wanted to find a restaurant that served an appetizer I especially love in Burgundy called œufs en meurette, which are eggs poached in red wine with herbs and bacon.  A nice lady in the tourism office suggested La Feuilette. 

The street where the restaurant is found is a typical, narrow Burgundy village street, practically what we would call a back alley in the U.S. 

While walking around, we saw this car parked in the street with its doors open, illustrating how narrow the streets can be, about the width of a parking place at a typical American shopping mall.  Imagine trying to pass an oncoming vehicle!  Somehow, they manage it.

We always seem to be the first to arrive. At noon or so for lunch or 7:00 for dinner, our normal mealtimes are earlier than most French restaurant patrons.  While we were sitting here, alone, someone walked in without a reservation and was turned away because all the tables were reserved.  Sure enough, within a half-hour, the place was completely full.

Here I am, studying the menu, called la carte in French.  The “menu” is actually a three course meal in France, an appetizer, called an entrée, a main course, called la plat, and cheese or dessert. 

Mary didn’t want a complete meal, so she had a salad of greens, beef carpaccio, hard-boiled egg, and tomatoes.  Here she is, waiting on wine and food.

 

I had my œufs en meurette à la Bourguignonne, which were delicious. 

 

The plat was baked whitefish in a fennel cream sauce with carrots, fennel, and celery, very inventive.

The wine was local Chablis, unlabeled, inexpensive, delicious.  At first, we thought it was a water bottle, but the water was brought later in a pitcher.  I watched the server dispense the wine for other patrons.  It basically came from a spigot on a very large bulk container.

After lunch, we drove to the top of the grand cru vineyards of Chablis.  We come up here every year to take photos and enjoy the view.  The grand cru vineyards enjoy a beautiful southwest exposure and the soil clearly shows the white, chalky limestone.  Blooming canola is seen in the distance and the rooftops and steeples of the town below.

 

 

The two photos above are the Les Clos grand cru of Chablis.  For some reason, it is the Chablis grand cru I see most often in American wine shops.  If you want to splurge on a very high quality Chablis at this level, Les Clos is a good bet.  Pair it with shellfish or a flaky white fish preparation on a weekend or special occasion with someone you love and I promise you won't be disappointed.

 

For those who are adventurous and would like to spend a day or two in Chablis, there are hiking trails that wind through all the grand cru vineyards.  For a wine geek like me, that would be pretty exciting.

We took the drive back to Magny-les-Villers on the backroads.  It is about three hours instead of 90 minutes, but it is a rolling postcard of beautiful small towns, meadows, forests, flowers, and history.  It gets us off the beaten tourist path, so we can experience more authentic French countryside.

We stopped for a coffee at this bar and restaurant in L’isle-sur-Serein.

This is Guillon, a town along the Serein River.  Serein translates to serene, which is a good reflection of the calm, slow, peaceful nature of this river.

Époisses is an old castle town that is best known now for its eponymous cheese.  It certainly is one of our favorites.

 

Semur-en-Auxois is a larger, medieval town on a bend in the river that was strategically important hundreds of years ago.  The large towers or ramparts are original to the old castle from the 11th or 12th century. 

The church is also historic and very beautiful from a distance.  Every year, we say we will come back to Semur to spend a day and we must plan that for our next trip.

Farther down the road and close to Beaune is the village of Ste. Sabine.  We love this image of the beautiful church, towering over the village, and set against the green hillside.  I think it gives you an idea of the powerful and prominent role played by the church in medieval Europe, but not so much today.  The bells ring every day at the church in Magny-les-Villers, but the schedule posted at the door indicates it is on a circuit with other small churches in the area, each one hosting mass about every eight weeks.

This photo is from a hilltop in Magny-les-Villers, back home at the end of Chablis day.  The image illustrates how small and nearby many of these villages are in Burgundy.  I’m standing at the edge of a vineyard just up the hill from the gite.  The village in front of me is Villers-la-Faye, separated from Magny-les-Villers by a farm field, 0.5 km apart, about a quarter mile.  The next village in the distance is Chaux, about the same size as Villers-la-Faye.  Each village is an easy walk from one another, which was important in the medieval history of Burgundy.

Dinner was at Ma Cuisine in Beaune, a restaurant we have visited twice before.  It has gotten some press in the U.S., so it is popular among Americans who are vacationing in the area.  That was certainly true today when we visited.  Almost every table was populated by English speakers, either American or British.

Empty wine bottles are everywhere, even in the planters on the wall, memories of past dinners. 

The carte is on a chalkboard.

Here’s Pierre, advising us about our wine choice.

The carte du vin unexpectedly showed this wine and at a reasonable price.  Pierre said, “It is not dead.  It still has life and freshness.”  We’re on vacation, so we decided to try it.  How often do we have the chance to experience a wine that is nearly 50 years old?  It was a Domaine des Hautes Cornieres Santenay village wine by Chapelle et fils 1966.

 

The color of the wine had evolved to a pale amber.  Pierre decanted the wine because of sediment that had collected after all these years.  The aromas were amazing, wet earth, forest floor, dried flowers and herbs, but what most surprised us was it still had fruit aromas and flavors.  The palate was fresh, still very alive, balanced, with cherry fruit, berries, dried citrus peel, and mineral notes. 

 

I have had many wines that were just as delicious, but the story of this wine attracted us to it.  I was 10 years old when the grapes were harvested.  Many of the people who picked the grapes and made the wine are elderly or have passed away.  Lyndon Johnson was President.  Think of all that has happened in the world since the grapes were picked, vinified, and the wine put into this bottle that we opened tonight at Ma Cuisine.  Americans walked on the moon, Vietnam and other wars were fought, advances in civil rights, technology, sports, all of it.  We grew up, married, had children, grandchildren, experienced joy and fulfillment, sorrow and loss.  And all that time, this wine was right here in this bottle, in a cellar in Beaune, waiting to be opened and consumed.  It is remarkable to consider its history, and ours.

 

Dinner was delicious.  Mary had a smoked salmon entrée.  I had escargots. 

 

 

 

Her main course was côte du veau, veal chop. 

 

Mine was magret de canard roti, roast breast of duck.

A cheese course and coffee completed an amazing dinner, an amazing evening, an amazing day.

 

That’s our post for today.  We hope you found it interesting and enjoyed it.  Keep checking back at Cépage et Cuisine for more of our France adventure.  Thanks for reading us.  In the meantime,

Cheers!

Mary♥Brian