Hello, everyone, bonjour et bienvenue to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food
blog. We left Burgundy today and drove
to St. Rémy-en-Provence. Early in the day, Yves and Marie came over and gave us a bottle of wine produced from grapes in their own small vineyard. It was such a nice gift, very personal. As we packed the car at the gite in
Magny-les-Villers, Marie ran out and wanted to take pictures. Attendre! Attendre!
Wait! Wait! We took pictures, hugged and said goodbye
until our next visit. 
Marie and Yves,
you are our friends. We will send photos
of our new grandchildren. Marie et Yves, vous êtes nos amis. Nous
allons envoyer des photos de nos nouveaux petits-enfants. Farewell, until we see you again. Adieu,
jusqu'à ce que nous vous reverrons.
We have such fondness for Magny-les-Villers, we changed the header photo
on the blog to the hilltop view of the village. Marie et Yves, nous avons une telle affection pour Magny-lès-Villers, nous avons changé la photo en haut de notre blog pour Magny.
I needed to say my own
goodbye to Burgundy, so on our way to the AutoRoute, I drove through
Aloxe-Corton and to the Hill of Corton.
I drove up a small road for vineyard workers as far as it would allow our
car, then I hiked to the cross at Corton-Charlemagne. Here are photos of the vineyard, the one below looking toward Pernand-Vergelesses. The images are not just rows of vines or the
cross placed there hundreds of years before.
The photos, to me, are about how humans found a harmony between themselves
and the land, how they found the place where a crop – grapes, and a specific grape, Chardonnay - reaches its most
thrilling heights, fulfilling the desires of the people who worked there over
hundreds of years. Goodbye, Bourgogne,
until next time.
We timed our departure
from Magny-les-Villers so that we would arrive near Mâcon and St. Laurent-sur-Saône
around lunchtime. We had lunch a year
ago at a restaurant in St. Laurent-sur-Saône where I enjoyed the poulet de Bresse. It is a breed of chicken produced in farms
around the town of Bourg-en-Bresse, east of the Saône across from Mâcon. Elsewhere, the same breed is sometimes called blue foot chicken.
Mary wanted to try it this year, so here we
are at Le Saint Laurent.
I had an entrée, a first course, of œuf poché au vin rouge avec des lardons, egg poached in red wine with
bacon. I love this dish and get it every
chance I can. Mary decided not to have
an appetizer course.
Her main
course was the poulet de Bresse crème,
the Bresse chicken in a cream sauce with small crêpes. As
with mine a year ago, Mary said it was divine, especially the sauce, rich and creamy, with a slightly wilder or
gamy flavor in contrast to supermarket chicken.
I had dos de cabillaud au vin jaune avec legumes
du soleil, cod in a spicy wine sauce with vegetables. The fish was delicious in the sauce, which
the server said was highlighted with curry spice.
Le Saint
Laurent has an excellent selection of wine, including half bottles, which is
the perfect size for lunch, about one nice glass each for two people. Following a good general rule of what grows
together goes together, we chose a nice Mâconnais, a Domaine Roger Lassarat
Saint-Veran 2011.
It was crisp,
refreshing, with bright lemon notes, great balance, and complemented our lunch
perfectly.
Here are
some photos of the Saône and the Mâcon riverfront. The bridge is very historic, about 900 or
more years old.
Our drive from St.
Laurent-sur-Saône to our destination in Provence, St. Remy-de-Provence, was
eventful. It was supposed to be three
hours. First, we missed a turn in Lyon,
which is quite a large city, and got lost for a little while. Then, when we got back on track on the
AutoRoute, we discovered that our credit cards, which were accepted on the A6
AutoRoute in Burgundy, were not accepted on the A7 AutoRoute in the south of
France. We got into the chute to pay a
toll, had cars behind us, and there we were, stuck. Eventually, after some honking by the annoyed
drivers behind us, we backed out, found an actual person who could help us,
paid cash, and went on our way. A tip
for future travelers is to not assume your American credit cards will
be accepted for highway tolls and always approach a lane at the toll station
that accepts cash euros. By the way, the same
applies at automated credit card swipes, such as gas stations where you pay at
the pump. American credit cards usually
don’t work there. You have to get gas
where an attendant can run the card for you or take your cash.
We made it to St. Rémy
at 6:30 p.m., about an hour late, and found our way to the home of our hosts with no problem. Gilles and Patricia were completely
understanding and Gilles escorted us to our new home away from home. He explained everything in La Maison Meublée, which translates
simply to “furnished house,” and even helped us make dinner reservations on a busy
Saturday evening.
St. Rémy is much warmer
than Burgundy and le mistral, a
fierce wind that blows at certain times of the year, was blowing today. We stopped for gas once on the AutoRoute and
Mary had difficulty even getting the car door open in the wind. Needless to say and as you can see in this photo, her hair was demolished. Back in Jackson, Mississippi, we called that
kind of wind a hurricane! We sure were
glad to collapse into restaurant seats at Le Bistrot des Alpilles and relax for
dinner.
After that big lunch at
Le Saint Laurent, I didn’t want a big dinner, so I had a salade nicoise avec saumon, a nicoise salad with salmon. It was just what I needed, not too heavy, but
delicious with a combination of cool and warm ingredients.
Mary had the signature
dish of the house, the gigot d’agneau,
a cutlet from a leg of lamb. She took
one bite and said, “Now, that’s what lamb tastes like.” It came with fries, still in the wire basket
in which they were cooked.
We shared a fromage de chèvre and we both had coffee.
Provence
is especially known for rosé and we’ve been looking forward to trying them. They're also usually inexpensive.
The wine tonight was Domaine d’Eole Coteaux
d’Aix-en-Provence 2012, a blend of six different grapes from the region. It was unremarkable, but was cold,
refreshing, had nice berry and melon flavors, and tasted great with the food.
That’s
our post for today. We hope you enjoyed
it. We’re looking forward to a good
night’s sleep and getting out into the countryside tomorrow. Keep checking back at Cépage et Cuisine as we continue on our wine, food, and cultural
experience in France. In the meantime,
Cheers!
Mary♥Brian
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