France Adventure, Day 7 – May 29, 2013 – Côte Chalonnaise and Côte de Beaune

Bonjour, a tous.  Hello, everyone.  Welcome back to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  Today was our day to go south into the Côte Chalonnaise and Côte de Beaune.  First things first, though, I went to Ladoix-Serrigny to get Mary her daily boulangerie surprise.  The tartellete framboise, a raspberry tart, looked great.

A little Burgundy geography might be helpful.  You can follow the map here to see what I describe.  It is divided into four main regions, five if Beaujolais is counted but we’ll consider only the main four here.  The northernmost area is Chablis, about 85 miles northwest of Dijon.  We wrote about that in a blog post a couple of days ago.

The most famous and prestigious region of Burgundy is the Côte d’Or.  That’s where we’re spending most of our time.  It runs from about Dijon in the north to Santenay in the south.  The Côte d’Or is divided into a northern part, called the Côte de Nuits, and a southern part, called the Côte de Beaune.  Examples of famous villages in the Côte de Nuits include Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-Saint Denis, Chambolle-Musigny, and Vosne-Romanée.  Well known villages in the Côte de Beaune are Aloxe-Corton, Beaune, Pommard, Volnay, Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, and Chassagne-Montrachet.

The areas to the south are the Côte Chalonnaise, which produces both red and white wines, and the Mâconnais, which produces mostly white wine.  Well known wine villages in the Côte Chalonnaise are Mercurey and Rully.  The Mâconnais includes Pouilly, Fuissé, and Saint Veran.

We visited the Mâconnaise last year, but we’ve never spent time in the Côte Chalonnaise, which is a large, open region of pretty rolling hills and small towns.  Chagny is a fairly large town by Côte Chalonnaise standards, probably about the size of Sebastopol, California, a little smaller than my hometown of Ringgold, Georgia and where we live now in Plymouth, Michigan.  A much larger nearby town on the A6 AutoRoute is Chalon-sur-Saône, where we got good and lost on our way to our first appointment.

I stopped at the small marché in Ladoix-Serrigny for a coffee on our way out of town.  Once again, we got a laugh out of how the French regard their morning coffee.  Their coffee portions are very small and they take it in tiny sips.  In this photo, I’m holding the coffee cup, which is about the size of one of those really small single serving yogurt cups.  And this was la grande.  The smaller size is an espresso cup.  I will say, though, that French coffee is stronger than typical American coffee.  How you order it is important, too.  If I ask for café crème, coffee with cream, I sometimes get something that is more like a latte or café au lait.  If I’m ordering in French (ha ha) and what I really want is an American style coffee with cream, I might say café avec une petite crème, coffee with a little cream.

 

 

 

 

 

Château Chamirey is a very old producer of wine in the village of Mercurey in the Côte Chalonnaise. 

 

The family was prominent in local affairs, as you can see by this plaque at the maison.  Louis Chamirey was active in Burgundy politics and was a longtime mayor of the city of Chalon-sur-Saône.  In more recent years, Château Chamirey has been acquired by the Devillard family who owns six estates in Burgundy.  We were greeted by Caterina at the modern tasting facility.  In addition to the wines of Château Chamirey, she tasted us through some of the wines of the other producers in the portfolio, which included some wines from premier cru and grand cru sites in the Côte de Nuits.  They were all very nice, white and red. 

 

Here you can see a photo of a soil sample from one of their Mercurey vineyards, Les Ruelles.  The dark red color indicates the high mineral content, especially iron, which conveys a firm, angular structure to the Pinot Noir.  In addition to the characteristics of the vineyard sites, we could both taste what might be a house style of herbs and spice notes, especially clove, that probably relates to the barrel selection. 

 

Here’s Mary, having fun during our tasting experience.  We talked about wine and food pairing with Caterina and she mentioned blanquette de veau as a good match with their wines.  We said it sounded interesting and would like to try it, so she actually emailed the recipe to us later.  Thanks, Caterina!

Just outside the tasting room, this view of the valley shows the rolling terrain of the Côte Chalonnaise, much more open and vast than the hillier and cozy topography of the Côte d’Or.

Our next appointment was near Rully (don’t even try to pronounce it unless you are a native French speaker, and even then it depends on where you’re from in France).  Chagny is nearby and large enough that we figured it would have restaurants. 

 

What we wanted was a simple neighborhood place with inexpensive, simple food and not a large multi-course meal.  The first place we saw fit the bill. 

 

Au 9G d’O (much easier to pronounce than Rully…sounds like oh-noof-zhee-dee-oh) is a bar and grill ...

 

... complete with neon signs, simple tables and chairs, local working people having lunch, and the early twenty-something server with ponytail, tee shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers.  No other Americans and no English speakers but we felt right at home.  Except for one thing.  The restroom turned out to be one small room with separate stalls for men and women, one each … tooo close for us!

The owner apparently has a fondness for the U.S.  He had a large poster of the Arizona west and one of the neon signs was a guitar that said Gibson USA.  He had a whole section of hamburgers on the menu, in English … “hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger, Texas burger, certified Black Angus.”  The rest of the menu was in French, including the fact that the burgers come avec frites, with fries.  That’s what Mary had and she said it was really good, very authentic, and not fast food-style at all, hand pattied and cooked to order with fresh cheese, lettuce and tomato.  It was nice for her to have some home cooking.

A French equivalent of everyday lunchtime home cooking is moules frites, steamed mussels and fries, available widely, even in train stations and airports.  They’re available in a variety of styles.  I ordered a simple preparation of herbs, onion, garlic, and white wine. 

 

They’re served in the steaming pot and the shells just go in the lid. The best part is the steaming liquid leftover and the bottom of the pot.  I like to dip the fries or just drop ‘em in there and fork ‘em up before they get too soggy. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The dish was wonderful, but I’m glad to report the mussels at Vivio’s in Detroit are just as good.

Domaine de la Folie in the Rully appellation is another historic family estate, dating back 500 years in this location and all in the same family.  On the way to the domaine, I stopped to take these photos.  You can see how much more foliage is on the vines here than in the Beaune area, which is only about 15 miles north, but the exposure is so much broader here in the Côte Chalonnaise, so the vines get more hours of sun per day when it shines. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can also see how these beautiful irises are more open here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The current generation in charge of the estate is the delightful and energetic Clèmence Dubrulle.  We were greeted by her equally delightful mother, Elisabeth, who tasted us through a few of their wines, although they were unfortunately out of their highly regarded Chardonnay.  Clèmence joined us for a nice conversation before we departed.  To get an idea of her personality, you can watch this two minute video of her from the harvest a couple of years ago.  The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajtVm9VXPNY She lived for a time in San Francisco and worked as an au pair, so she is fluent in English.

You can see in this photo of one of their vineyards that it slopes right down to a canal at Chagny.  What is also interesting in the photo is that it is a diverse estate.  You can see the fruit trees on the left.  They also have a nice vegetable garden growing and their agricultural practices are sustainable.

 

 

Here’s one of their old grape presses they have on display.

An interesting back story is that Clèmence’s great-great-grandfather, Étienne Marey, part of the generational line who owned the estate in the late 1800s, was a physiologist, inventor, and professor of medicine at l’Academie de Medecine.  He contributed to the development of time lapse photography so he could better understand the physiology of movements.  For example, he was the researcher who conducted the studies about cats always landing on their feet and proved that there is a moment when all four hooves of a galloping horse touch the ground at the same time. 

 

He built these stone towers to conduct some of his work, now landscaped with flowers.

 

 

On the way back to Magny-les-Villers we took a detour into the famous white wine vineyards of Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet, and Chassagne-Montrachet.  Here is some background that I think is interesting.  In the late 1800s, Burgundy was struggling economically.  Their wines were already quite famous around the world and the grand cru vineyards were very prestigious.  Leaders in the small communes where the grands crus are located thought they might increase interest and tourism in their communities if they appended the names of the famous grand cru vineyards to their village names.  Gevrey became Gevrey-Chambertin, Chambolle became Chambolle-Musigny, Aloxe became Aloxe-Corton, and so forth. 

It so happens that Le Montrachet, perhaps the most prestigious of all the Chardonnay vineyards in the world, lies about half in Puligny and half in Chassagne, so they both claimed it.  Puligny became Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne became Chassagne-Montrachet.  Meursault does not include any grands cru, so no vineyard name is appended to the village name, even though some of the wines of Meursault can be magnificent.

 

 

 

 

Here are photos from Meursault, including the magnificent church steeple, visible from a distance, and the mayor’s office with its characteristic glazed tile rooftop.

 

Just down the road about a kilometer is Meursault-Perrieres, a fairly small enclosed vineyard which produces wonderful wine.  Because it is a premier cru and not a grand cru, it is reasonably affordable and we have enjoyed many wines from this vineyard.

The Montrachet name is part of several grand cru vineyard names and how they got those names is also quite interesting.  Legend says that during the Middle Ages the Seigneur de Puligny (lord of Puligny) divided parcels of his estate among his children.  One of his sons was a knight in the Crusades, thus his parcel was named Chavelier Montrachet.  His other son was the product of an illicit affair with a mistress, so his parcel was named Bâtard (bastard) Montrachet.  His daughters were given a lesser site, now designated as a premier cru, which became named Les Pucelles (young virgins).

Here, I’m standing at Chavalier Montrachet.  It’s hard to appreciate how such ordinary-looking, stumpy little vines produce grapes of such prestige and value. 

 

Just down the slope and separated from Chavalier-Montrachet by an unpaved lane is Le Montrachet, seen in these photos. 

 

 

And just below that on more level ground, separated by a narrow road, is Bâtard Montrachet.  Although contiguous, the differences in soil, slope, and aspect produce different wines, which the Cistercians were able to understand over time and to delineate the vineyards.

To be honest, I’ve never tried a Montrachet grand cru.  Their prices are too high for my budget.  A 2010 Bâtard Montrachet by Domaine Henri Boillot is $350 per bottle.  A 2010 Chevalier-Montrachet is $530.  A 2006 Montrachet by Domaine Bouchard is $600. 

We thought this image was interesting.  It is in Chassagne in the village.  In the middle of all that high class dirt, the owners of this property decided to put in a vegetable garden along with the vineyard.  That’s great for diversity, but they’re giving up some income in order to grow some leeks and greens. 

After we left Chassagne and on the way back to Magny-les-Villers, we approached the magnificent Hill of Corton with its characteristic crown of trees.  This view is of the Corton-Charlemagne vineyard.

Charlemagne was a Frankish king in the 700s.  Supposedly, he claimed this vineyard for himself because it is the place where snow first melts, the idea being that grapes would ripen best there because of the sun exposure.

Mary took these photos as we approached Magny-les-Villers from a hillside.  You can see the vineyard with its alternating rows of cover crops, the fruit trees, and the pretty rooftops of the village.  Our gite is next door to the church.

 

 

 

 

 

Mary cooked dinner at the gite, a delicious meal of salmon and vegetables we bought at the supermarket, nothing elaborate. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We finished the dinner with a nice cheese plate. 

We stopped earlier at Domaine Bouchard Père et Fils to taste a few wines and pick up a nice wine for dinner. We chose a beautiful Gevrey-Chambertin Les Cazetiers 2007, a premier cru. 

 

It was a wonderful wine, an example of the characteristics of a red Burgundy we enjoy so much, the earth, the fruit, and the terrific texture in the mouth.  I only wish I had some of these at home.

That’s our post for today.  We hope you enjoyed it.  What a nice day!  Keep checking back at Cépage et Cuisine as we continue our France adventure.  In the meantime,

Cheers!

Mary♥Brian